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
Sounds positive Lev_. Nice one!
Bad luck CJ though 8 weeks seems a lot for a sprained ankle.
PP - looking in very good shape already! Congrats on the vest.
3-4lbs CW? I wish I was only that much over. I can't remember the last time I stepped on a scales but I reckon I must be at least a stone over race weight at the moment. Maybe I need to find the scales and see how bad it is to get focused!
Bad luck ES.
Good to see you coro. What races have you got in the pipeline?
First night in the new house today
Spent all of today moving stuff, but still loads more to do over the next few days. Being decorating, etc, as usual, the last few days, but managed to get some running in even if it was very (very very) ploddy!
Legs have felt rough on every run this week. I'm assuming that it's simply the lack of sleep and being constantly on the go with the house all catching up with me. Plan was to spend this week running easy to build the volume up and, though it doesn't seem like I've done much I counted back, and my average mileage for the last 19 weeks was 46m, whereas I've done 46m in the last 4 days (3/5, 5/10, 6/12 and 6 this morning - ran out of time to do a second run as I only got to have dinner about 9:30).
Will get to run tomorrow with a bit of luck, hopefully a double, and hopefully enough to put me in the 60s for the week. Then Sunday off, and will start to introduce sessions next week. Just as well 15 weeks is a long time as I'll need every bit of it!
Notts XC County Champs today (which is combined with Derbyshire and you didn't miss much Bainspj!). Thick gloopy mud was the order of the day. I finished a lot lower down the field than last year (8th compared to 3rd) but was still first Old Lady and we were the first team too, so came away with 2 gold medals.
CC2 - well done on the clutch of gold medals!
TT - great you are now in the new house, it most be nice feeling after all the work.
I saw Elvis today... well I saw Dan at parkrun and sadly he wasn't in costume. Not much to report here. Had a cold over new year but been running this week plodding out the miles. With a long run tomorrow should make 55ish for the week.
Would have taken a few pics but my fingers were comfortably numb by then..
Well done on the bling CC2!
coro's spikes are nearly new. The only ones I have are the Nike ones my Mum bought me when I was about 15... I tend to run in XTalons for XC and in flats on the track, both of which are lighter than my spikes. Maybe I should get some for Parliament Hill in a few weeks though, as I guess that can turn into a mud-fest where the superior grip would help.
Congrats on successfully moving TT!
I ended up with a rather ploddish but reasonable mileage (62) last week, despite not having a proper long run.
It's my birthday tomorrow, so a) I spent yesterday cooking for an evening party and so had a rest exercise-wise, and b) as a pre-birthday treat and to make up for the excessive food, wine, and late bedtime, I did my first training marathon of this campaign this morning, including 20xCastle Hill (it's not big) and 10M tempo (only 6:51/M, hope that doesn't prove to be MP!). The distance felt very comfortable -- I haven't lost my endurance adaptations it seems. Unlike my stomach, which felt like it was still full of party food... 3hr14 overall, so I wasn't killing myself, even in my current state of (un)fitness.
CC2 - Congrats on the county bling .
A little less bling for me at the Kent XC and a different colour but I was pleased with my run. A fairly tough, heavy going 12k around (the overflow car park for) Brands Hatch. My trademark slow start, but within the first couple of miles I'd overtaken five of my club mates and pretty much held position till the end to finish 31st overall, 8th scorer for the club. The medal was for coming 2nd team (12 to score). Tonbridge dominated team honours but club mate John Gilbert won the title for something like the sixth (?) time.
16 fairly hilly miles today, feeling a little creaky and doing all I could to keep up with MsP who was feeling "brilliant" after her individual County silver behind a XC international!
19.2 for me today, dodging puddles and muggles. The nice weather brought the feckless public out in force. Really, how hard is it to navigate a kissing gate? Bah. Anyway, 8.03s with plenty of obstacles.
CW - happy birthday, long run madness so far out fr vlm though.
After nothing longer than 5m in the week and a zero last sunday, I was forcrd to run in the rain today. Managed to up my pre Christmas long run of 12m to 14m too ! What a mileage monster !
CW - Happy birthday and nice long run
Jools/TR - Nice long and longish runs
PhilP - The Kent XC, and especially your club, sounds like a very high standard. Well done on the bling.
113 @ 7:16 for me last week including my first XC outing for over 20 years in a pretty bleak but beautiful setting on the North Devon coast. Ankle deep in mud for most of it and occassionally knee deep in water along with 24 x ditch/stream crossings was a bit of a shock but I really enjoyed it. Managed to sneak in as last scorer for the club so definitely a worthwhile trip.
Happy Birthday CW!
CC2 - congrats on all the bling.
Coro - sorry, didn't pop in this weekend so missed your post. I was at Stevenage yesterday - did min-Coro run and if so how did he do? He seems to have been doing pretty well in the Chiltern League this year. Good luck with that commute!
PP - solid run at the XC and backed up with a long run. Sounds like MsPP will be beating you fairly soon!
TR - well done on starting on the big mileage! Plenty of time to build up.
RS - that sounds pretty tough, especially at the end of a 113M week!
Herts XC for me yesterday. Had an OK run, 8th place, about 20s behind my clubmate who is marginally quicker than me over 10k. A bit of a strange course as there were muddy sections, dry grass sections, and a bit of unavoidable tarmac. I went for trail shoes, but most people went for spikes, which meant a lot of yoyo-ing back and forth depending on the surface. No idea which would have been faster, probably not much in it to be honest.
(Belated) Happy New Year to all
. Not been on here much in recent months, my last post was 1st Oct! Managed an occasional catch up read, so I've got a the general jist of what's been going on... (following people on Strava etc. helps!). Stand out runs definitely include Ryan S at Pisa - awesome finish line celebrations! Nice marathons from Jimbob and Selbs at Florence, CW around Snowdonia (Happy Birthday btw 
), ES at NYC and crazy off-road running from SL and Dan. Lots of quality county XC racing going on the weekend past congrats on the bling, CC2, PP and good placing Padams
I had a reasonable training stretch through the autumn, I adopted an easy only/aerobic improvement approach (a la John Hadd), with no session/speed, and bagged some decent times at the Lordshill 10 (57:06) and Gosport Half (75:51). Then got a nasty chest virus at the start of December which hit my fitness pretty hard. I had recovered enough to run the Christchurch Christmas 10k (34:28) mid Dec, but the heart rate data told me that I'd been set back
. Carried on the easy running over Christmas/NY so I'm hoping to start to see a return in the next few weeks.
London training kicked off last week with 95M@7:21/M including the Hants XC Champs (44th 6:59/M). In a bid to break the habit of 3 x 2:33-ish of the last couple of years, I'm changing marathon training approach to generally easy/decent volume (85-100M/wk) with a couple of sub-lactate threshold runs per week to start with. It seems to be working well before I got ill, so the plan is to continue that up to the Wokingham Half then decide how to tackle the 2 months leading up to London. I'll be running the Stubbington 10k this weekend, is anyone else?
DanA – football can help with recovering from a marathon or ultra!? That's quite some claim.
Coro – that’s an incredible commute. You’d need to be up at Coro’clock for that! Ouch.
CC2 – glad to hear I didn’t miss much. 2 medals and a county vest in one race though… good day's work.
TT – great news about the house. Hopefully when your routine falls in place a little and the work relents, it’ll all come good.
CW – Happy birthday. Massively impressed with that training marathon.
Good run PP.
Al_P – welcome back. That looks like a decent block of training so hopefully the benefit won’t be lost, just misplaced for a few weeks!
The illness seems to be relenting a little, so I’ve managed a few steady runs over the past three days: Fri: 3m @ 7:45s, Sat: 10m @ 7:15s and Sun: 6.5m @ 6:55s. Weirdly, the 6:55s for 6.5m felt the easiest by far.
I’ve been through the Pfitzinger HM (50-60mpw) schedule this morning and moulded it to fit prior commitments, favoured training days etc... I’m thinking about giving it a whirl for 12 weeks leading up to the Cardiff Half in March.
Bainspj - I wouldn't recommend to anyone other than someone who has been doing both for years.
CW - Happy birthday (today?). Mine in two weeks, and have just booked a last minute week's trip to La Santa around it. Anyone been? Is it just full of poncey triathletes? Will I have to learn to swim properly? Do they have a bar?
Dan - I went there a few years ago (well, 6 years ago now I think about it). Yes, there were lots of poncey triathletes, I was one of them! Quite a few on organised training camps of one form or another, but also quite a few people just doing their own thing - running, cycling, swimming or whatever, with varying degrees of seriousness. Almost certainly you'll get the chance to add to your collection of snaps with sportspeople we may have heard of. We went in February and the weather was variable, to say the least. Yes, there's a bar!
Happy birthday CW.
Well done to all those at various county XC champs. My own XC adventures at the weekend were limited to watching the Edinburgh races on the telly. On Sunday morning 50 miles on the bike were far preferable to trudging through the mud. Evidence that Surrey is far posher than Kent - their XC champs are held in a car park, in Surrey we use a vineyard.
Happy new year all. My good intentions of keeping up with this thread came to nothing again, but I did see an awesome performance by Ryan at Pisa, congratulations on that, just rewards for putting in a big chunk of work.
Birthday greetings to Charlie.
Bad luck on the strain ES, hope you can salvage something from it this spring.
Good XCing PP, shame you're in such a deep county in terms of qualifying for a county vest, but good to see you managed it for the 20.
Quality double gold from CC2 despite being off previous years. Also good stuff from Padams.
Will anyone be at the Inter Counties?
I also did the county championships on Saturday, this time in the glorious surrounds of Slough, with the aim of getting a Berkshire vest again. I thought I'd be borderline, after some dire XC performances before Christmas, but in the end I had a pretty decent run, finishing 7th and getting the vest. Lost 6th place on the last few corners, but was still pleased. For some reason, Berkshire changed the masters category from 40 to 35, so I was the beneficiary of that, winning vets gold - that's my first ever age group prize, and I'm not sure whether to be pleased about that fact or not.
Well done on the assorted XC races (esp your county vest Dachs) and long runs since I last posted, folks.
Welcome back Al_P -- will be really interesting to see how the new approach works. I feel I'm migrating to a higher-mileage, low-intensity approach just because I seem so poor at doing speed work these days, and get a lot of miles in my commutes (the two may be related of course).
coro -- a 35M run to work has to be an all-time record. I think I did 23 once...
I celebrated my actual birthday (thanks for the wishes!) yesterday by doing the first lunchtime run from work in years, as I had to cycle both commutes, but wanted to get another run in before any DOMS materialised from my training marathon -- just 10k steady. Again this morning I had to cycle in for an early meeting, but will probably run home. The legs seem OK, maybe because I didn't muster any speed to speak of on Sunday. Overall this week may be quite high volume, whereas next week I have a work trip to Austria and a 15M race at the weekend, so that's likely to be shorter and sharper.
Hope the birthday went well Charlie, think I sent my best wishes on FB & hope some cake was forthcoming!
Nice work in the XC Dachs, well done on the medal. .. & well done on the mud also to PP & Padams.
Good to see you back to it Al P, shame about the pre Xmas bug. Great running in the 10 miler & Half-marathon.
On a more modest level did a club 5m race in the middle of a 13m MLR on Sunday. As this is a point to point race sadly the last 3.5m were into the teeth of a strong wind. With the time unimportant I concentrated on racing & managed to overhaul a few younger rivals who often get the better of me. 34:57 nothing to write home about but managed 5th/38 so pleased enough. 5.4m yesterday and a 4m + 8.5m double today keeps the miles ticking over.
Most of my runs are still 'out east' due to our town's broken bridge, though a couple of temporary footpaths/footbridges are materialising which may help towards a bit of variety! The bridge itself is about a year's work sadly.
Welcome back Al and Dachs
Blimey, that's a long time to be without a bridge, Wardi, although I guess if they're recreating the old one it won't be easy work. Nice racing - a decent tempo run and good placing.
Club session last night. Still pretty sluggish on the mud (I'm becoming more of a road specialist!), but at least I managed to run the 6 x 1K reps faster each time, starting with a modest 3.57 and finishing with 3.45.
Wardi - that must be tough with the bridge gone, but I guess people get used to it or find a way to cope. Good effort in the 5M race!
Jools - 1k reps? Very disappointing, I was hoping for 950m or something similarly random. That's a decent pace in the mud.
Dachs - I was looking at some results and noticed Bucks had a V35 category. I thought I could do with that in the Herts champs, but I was beaten by a V50 so I probably shouldn't be claiming some sort of age-related moral victory.
Turns out we won the team prize at the counties, so I will be receiving some bling in due course. Did an easy 4.5M with the dog on Monday (her longest run so far), and 9M with some light tempo 1M efforts (5:4x) on the track last night, which felt pretty easy. I'll probably try a longer run this evening, then a couple of easy days before (another) XC on Saturday.
Sorry, Padams...
14M at lunchtime @ 7.45m/m ave. An out-and-back on the Bristol-Bath bike path always flatters, because there is a gradual incline on the way out and obviously then a gradual downhill on the way back, hence 8m/m ave at the turn point but 7.45 ave overall. Lovely to be out in the daylight and the sunshine
Jools - Someone stole my strava course record on that path a few weeks back (I did it during a visit to the in-laws a while back). Good long run pace though, especially after a good session last night too.
Great counties run Dachs.
CW – two cycles and a run the day after a full marathon, at any pace is impressive. The reduced week next week should be a perfect balance against the miles of this week.
Good racing Wardi – in the absence of meaningful times a few good scalps is all you can ask for!
I hope you are building that dog’s mileage steadily Padams – we don’t want it getting any overtraining issues/injuries.
Monday’s club road reps session was a bit of a ‘mare and I could definitely feel some chest tightness from the cold/illness. I completed the targeted 6 reps (each between 1,250 and 1,400m) but struggled, and was as slow as I have ever been on that session.
Then a turbo last night in the warmth of the conservatory for an hour.
At lunch today, I decided I wanted to do a bit of a session to see how I was feeling. Had a go at the Pfitzinger HM schedule’s threshold session of the week: 18mins at LT [4mins rec] 12mins at LT. Managed the reps in c. 5:53 and 5:55 / mile. (reckon this was about the correct pace for current fitness, maybe a couple of seconds slow).
Felt surprisingly good considering the past week’s struggles. Overall 10.3m in 6:33s.
Jools - Good effort on the off-road k reps and and a very pleasant sounding MLR!
Dachs - Top work on the county bling and vest, are you Wokinghaming this year?
Wardi - Great bit of racing in the middle of a MLR, the flooding has been a much lesser inconvenience down south but still can catch you out - my easy run this evening gained an extra mile when I got to an underpass which looked more like a swimming pool...
Padams - Congrats on the XC team prize
Bains - good job getting through the club rep sesh and a nice LT run too.
Coro - Have you done the mega commute run yet? My longest work runs have been 31 & 32 miles (one in each of the previous 2 years in prep for a summer 50k trial race)
Decent week so far, 10+5 Easy Monday, then 14 inc 70min Sub-LT (HR155-160) and 4M recovery on Tuesday and another 10+5 Easy today. The Sub-LT section on Tuesday was probably a little hard owing to a combination of 4 x hilly/windy park laps which made up the bulk of the effort. I also had the company of a, fitter, run partner (occasional forumite, Scott Edgington) who pushed me on a bit! av heart for the 70mins came out as 163, so definitely on the high side. Planning to repeat the run on Friday morning solo, so it will be interesting to see the comparison.
Nice one on the medals CC2. First old lady - v35 I presume?
Congrats on the team medal PP. How do you guys normally do in the Southerns? You must be quite strong?
Huge mileage RS.
Good to see you Al_P. Will be interesting to see how it works out for you. For me, the change from specific to less specific training paid off, and you convert similarly to me as I remember, so maybe the way to go after the threshold runs is 10k-paced long efforts.......
Dachs - nice old man result
Nice repping Jools.
bains - similar runs/areas being worked on for us today (i.e. threshold, but yours was much tougher than mine) . We're in not dissimilar current shape by the looks of it. Nice session.
Today was supposed to be the day I got back to track, having spent the day building my new kitchen, but there are plumbing problems in the new gaff and I ended up having to dig down ~3ft to find the access hatch for the waste (not a very accessible access hatch obviously!) and having to wait in for a plumber (never arrived of course) instead of working on the kitchen.
Still managed to fit in 9m this evening with a 3m tempo @ 5:48 (to go with 5m this am, which makes 40m for the 3 days) - that was probably about 10m race pace. I seem to manage to run comparatively quicker when I'm unfit (I usually struggle to hit even HM pace for a 3m tempo), so pleased with that for where I am.
CW - belated happy birthday.
Well done CC2, Dachs and Padams in your races - great efforts and fun to read.
TT sorry about plumbing problems but great to see you channelled any frustration into a meaty tempo run.
Joolska - sounds like training is going really well. Great to fit in a 14 miler at lunch!
Coro - look forward to hearing about the 35 mile commute. I guess it will be a 3am start at the latest.
In awe of your weekly mileages Al_P and RS
Bainspj - great reps and good luck with the training programme. I'm also thinking of adapting that schedule.
Turns out the sprained ankle got miraculously better - maybe having it mildly electrocuted at the physio helped, and so I'm back to running, though trying to keep at recovery HR and that means typically 7.30-7.45 per mile. It was 40C plus in Melbourne yesterday. I risked a short jog and it turned into quite a useful way of getting a good workout (8.15 per mile, which felt more like 5.45 min miles!!)
TT - Been following your DIY exploits on Facebook, looks like a real mission! That's a niffy tempo run last night. how long and what volume of 10k paced efforts out of interest?
CJeff - +40degC? Ouch. Kudos just for going out in that!
An hour strength & conditioning work in the gym early am for me and then 8-10M easy at lunch, hoping the beautiful clear blue skies hang around until then...
Wardi -- the missing bridge sounds like a bit of a nightmare. (I have a related worry that the old railway path bridge near Keswick could take years to put back, as it wouldn't count as critical infrastructure like yours -- will affect LS21.) No birthday cake yet for me -- we overcatered for friends at the weekend, so I'm postponing it until this weekend now we've cleared the pudding backlog!
I would have done my MLR today but had another earlyish meeting, so did it yesterday instead -- but that meant my legs weren't ready for speed, so it was just 11M steady. So far I'm on 65M for the week with two more commutes to come, so could be around 80M for the first time in a long time. I'll be biking home tomorrow, partly to be in time for a talk by my clubmate Christof who inspired Ryan Snell's recent marathon training (will you be there too?).
Charlie.. this is probably the prettiest picture of the damaged bridge, my house is just above those buildings. Those pipes hanging down are a mixture of gas, elec & BT. At present there is a BT portakabin HQ on the hill, they are trying to re-route the lines before something breaks! The weather up here today is abysmal, snow & strong winds. However there are divers going into the water today to assess the structure underwater. Very envious of CJ's 40 degrees!