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Still good miles in the bank CC2 & congrats on the silverware.
Nice double day double digit runs Jools!
Good training Jooligan & RB (nicely understated Park Run win).
LMH.. it was raining pre-race but it kindly petered out in the first couple of miles. Very light winds too so nice conditions overall. Bad day for me, felt well out of sorts after 3-4 miles so I can only assume the Xmas bug was still lingering. Couldn't shake it off so took my foot off the pedal and had a steady run round. Ran with one of the club girlies for a while on her way to a PB so at least something positive came out of it. Result 1:41, ran another 5m afterwards to make a long run of sorts. Not too downbeat, just one of those days I guess.
Had a chat with Charlie at the start and told him to go for it given the pan flat course and good conditions. He surprised himself I think but will let him tell his own tale when he gets off the train at Cambridge.
Sorry to hear that Wardi.
Quiet on here recently but I expect it's as you're all training hard. Good to see Gobi pop back in!
Wardi - never mind, good that you got a decent long run out of it at least.
CC2 - that's a lot of shiny stuff to carry home! Nice long run too.
Saturday morning I did about 8.5M inc. the parkrun, which I won in 19:11. No, that isn't a typo, nineteen minutes and eleven seconds for the win. It was the off-road course (due to the ice) which is probably about a minute slower than the tarmac one. I hadn't planned to race it due to XC the next day, but was in the lead group at a comfortable pace so pushed on a bit in the last mile to get the win.
Then XC yesterday (the lower standard league). 2nd place this time as my fast clubmate showed up. He beat me by about 20s - I could have probably gone about 30s quicker, but then he would have done too so seemed little point in destroying myself. That means I've won the individual title in the league I think, so could miss the last fixture, but it's one of my favourite courses so will probably do it anyway.
HH
Joolska - that's a lovely back-to-back session, well done.
Jooligan - good TM effort
CC - BLING!!! Well done.
Padams - good XCing.
Have already seen the BM results from a few, not Wardi though, sensibly eased back. I assume no bad boy drinking with the usual alkys?
21M for me yesterday - dead slow pace, legs not up for it, and carrying a bit of a hip flexor/glute niggle. 80+ week.
May see a few of you in the coming months
All the best
Welcome back Gobi! [And x-post edit: farwell again
]
RB -- nice parkrun win
Padams -- well done on the XC and league result, and the parkrun too
CC2 -- great stuff -- I like getting the non-mortality buy-in from your nearest and dearest first!
Wardi -- when I failed to catch you at the finish I should have guessed you were still out there in your smoking jacket chaperoning some female! Great to see you at the start.
So yes, Brass Monkey half for me too. My ambitions were low as I've been ill on and off for 3 weeks, got a bit heavier over Xmas, and had a few late beers with LS21 and Mr&Mrs Njord the night before. But as Wardi said the conditions were actually good, no ice or wind and just a little drizzle to keep us cool, and the course is flat. I found my breathing surprisingly light for pace, and while my HR still seemed a bit high my legs were happy enough. I kept a lid on things for about 5 miles and then thought I was gradually pushing on, and did take quite a few places in the latter stages, but actually that equated to even pace on the clock as everyone else was slowing down. Scores on the doors: 1:15:57, 35th overall, but only 4th V45 -- the 1st V45 this year was 1:10:xx, some 7 mins faster than last year's V45 winner! So I was well out of the prizes.
So while I was expecting 1:18 or something, my actual time (now I'm 47) comes out at a WAVA score I've rarely bettered. A fine weekend overall, my belated birthday celebration, sociable running-wise, caught up with my son at uni, and family stuff too. Even did my old Dad's tax return on the train. All good.
HH
CW - I expected nothing less, so well done. And I do hope you have authority
Gobi - less wheels, more feet.
CC2 - congratulations on the armful of trophies and don't sweat the sub-par speed session this early in the campaign. It's all grist to the mill.
Jools, nice back-to-back sessions there.
Padams, congratulations on the XC series title.
CW - top stuff at the BM and sounds like a great weekend all round.
Solid training from you RB. Sounds like we had pretty similar experiences with our long runs - see below.
83M posted for me last week. That culminated in yesterday's 20M which was supposed to have some MP in it but right from the off I knew that wasn't going to happen because my legs wouldn't play ball. I decided I'd be happy with a bit of progression in the 2nd half, similar to last week's 20 which was 76:11/69:30. However it became increasingly clear that even that wasn't going to happen. I struggled to get any kind of faster leg turnover in the 2nd half, and at around 18M the legs decided they'd had enough and I basically coasted home. 75:27/73:30. Slightly different route but a full 4 mins slower in the 2nd half. I guess the higher mileage is taking its toll, but hopefully in a good way. Thank goodness this week is a back-off week!
Nice result Charlie.
ES - I often find I get the odd much slower than usual run when I'm building the miles, don't sweat it.
There may be more bling, it turns out I was third in the league over all as well!
Always nice to surprise yourself Charlie.
Here you are coming into the finish Charlie, impressive both feet in the air shot..
https://www.flickr.com/photos/128440813@N04/31970573250/in/album-72157675578162713/
That's a lot of air!
So that's why Charlie ran so fast: he flew!
Excellent news on the bling, Speedy
Bit of an attack of the plods here: 8.45m/m for yesterday's recovery run and 8.09m/m for today's 9 miler.
HH
ES - what's a cutback week?
12 miles this am with 8x 800 thrown in, all sub 3mins. Still got a jog home to do for a decent day's work.
Going to try the rival to parkrun tomorrow - Great Run Local - since it's near my new office. 1 M w/u, 5k blast, 6M jog home. Not expecting anything great.
CW gets a lot of midair photos. His garmin will tell him cadence and ground contact time so he could work out how many of those 76 minutes he was actually airborne.
Nice haul there CC2.
Still no running for me, it's improving but I don't want to rush. I tried swimming at the weekend which was fine, except pushing off the end was painful so I just used the one leg for that. Not an option for running, I've found.
RB -- good work this morning. And actually I am overqualified, being both my Dad's registered agent and power of attorney donor
I do rather gloss over the "has your client approved this" checkbox though, I guess he has via LPA...
ES -- in line with what LMH says, my legs get increasingly ploddish with the big miles and completely unequal to any speed at all. Give them a day or two off though and they're as right as rain. So my current strategy is to do a lot of commuting doubles, but then have Sat (and maybe Fri) off if I want to bag some quality in my Sunday run.
Nice photo, thanks Wardi! I was wondering if there were any. I note you picked flatteringly from the 4 available -- must skim through the collection to spot you and others later.
CD -- Good luck with the leg. Now I _save_ a lot of (favoured) midair photos, and discard the only other sort of running picture (appearing to stand foolishly on one leg while making a lemon-sucking expression). And you're a genius, of course you're right, the data is all there: running at 190 spm, each stride takes 316 ms of which my Garmin reckons I was on the ground for 181 ms. So I was in the air for 43% of the time or 32.5 mins... cor, doesn't it add up? [Edited: my arithmetic]
Legs too creaky to run yesterday, but plodded in to work today. I didn't want to start too soon, but maybe it is notionally marathon training now. OK I did do a couple of 20M plods in the holidays, too.
HH
CW - just as well, I didn't want to go looking for that 64-8
Sounds like you understand these things a lot better RB, I'm just an enthusiastic amateur (as with most things!). I meant LPA attorney, not donor... If this is what you do for work, then good luck for the next fortnight
A day out for work tomorrow led me to squash some miles into yesterday and today, but my legs are still cranky from the HM so they've been very slow plods indeed. Gorgeous both mornings in the rising sun though -- did a certain amount of XC this morning, with the ground frozen enough to not be too muddy, but compliant enough not to be wretchedly lumpy. Magic.
CW - Cracking HM time, nice one. And belated happy birthday!
ES - Looks like your training has been pretty full-on recently, so no surprise if a pacy LR was a struggle. I'd be fairly happy with how things are going I reckon.
I've been a bit quiet mainly keeping my head down trying to shake off a cold. Last week's mileage was minimal but I'm glad I rested as much as I did as things seemed to have cleared up by the weekend. I'll use the cold as an excuse for not quite managing to keep up with Simon Coombes in the Surrey League XC, but really I ran OK and he had another really good run. In mad contrast to the same fixture last year, whilst I matched my non-scoring team position of 12th, overall I was 47th (first top 50 position this season) compared to 74th last year. With the help of some very quick second-claim athletes we closed 10 in 35 and now have a comfortable lead in the league with one match left.
Hammies were a bit stiff the next day but no problems completing my first 20 miler of the year. No MP running yet this week, but yesterday was the epic hilly fartlek session instead of track, 20 reps and 13.5 miles total. Mid-way through an easy 5/10 today, and tomorrow should finally be my first session at Battersea Park. Not sure what that will entail (haven't seen the e-mail yet) but should be fairly high volume continuous tempo trying to keep up with faster runners. Can't wait.
LMH, CW, PP - seems like I'm in good company, obviously the plods are an integral part of a high-mileage diet! I'm not worried about it. Of course it helps that after a rest day yesterday I blasted through today's 13M MLR in record time, including a 6:50 average for the last 6 miles.
PP (and SC2), great work on the XC.
CC2 - you'll have to buy a new trophy cabinet!
Cheers PP & ES - Yes very contented with that one, course I quite like though and I could tell PP's cold had taken a bit out of him. Speedy Long run ES..
Who says XC is an old man's game? I was 31st and 6th V40! Ridiculous amount of speedy old buggers
HH
Last night's GRL didn't go exactly to plan. About a mile jog down, met a few faces I knew, got a brief overview of the course, and off we went - basically it's an out and back course, 2 laps, flat, but in total 8 x 90 degree corners, and 4 x 180 degree turns, so IMO not exactly a fast course. Legs didn't really want to play early on, and had been having tummy issues during the day, and suffered a nasty stitch. Watch time was 19.48, but the way they work their timing is very different to parkrun (get a wristband by registering and you tap your wristband against a timing app on a mobile phone), so officially another 7 secs on top of that. Pretty disgusted tbh, not with the organisation, only myself. Plodded 6M home inc an emergency pit-stop. Ewwww!
RB - Ick! Sounds tough, tummy troubles are bad enough in training runs but add an extra bit of hell to harder efforts. All good training, eh.
SC - There must be some new fast old buggers around. I can't wait to turn 45! I keep half an eye on RunBritain rankings and for the same handicap I'd be going up from ~top 80 to top 25 in age category after my birthday in June. And a fast marathon is usually worth a healthy bump on the handicap so should be higher than that hopefully.
Nice racing guys. To be honest I thought PP might just pip SC, sounds like both had decent runs though.
RB - not a bad effort taking all of that into account (and you've got quite a few miles in your legs).
Speaking of miles in the legs, I had a bit of correspondence with Marders over the last couple of days (not sure he visits here nowadays) and he mentioned he'd done a few 200+ miles weeks recently...
Just some running with the dog for me this week, 2-4M each morning. I tried a few 400m efforts in this morning's run just to stretch the legs a bit, which forced the dog from a trot to a gentle canter.
Ooof, sounds like a tough day, RB. These things happen, and a much better day will be along soon!
I had the plods yesterday, and could only manage 8.08m/m for my 14 miler. Pretty knackered after an early start for work, but hopefully last night's better sleep will see a faster result at the Weston Prom Run 5 miler tonight!
Padams - I follow Marders on Strava, and yes, before Christmas he ratcheted up a couple of 200+ mile weeks in a row and took himself to over 5400 miles for the year, which is 100 a week on average. Astonishing.
Jools - the plods seem to be contagious around here! Good luck at Weston tonight.
PP, SC2, looks like I picked the wrong year to turn V45
.
200 mile weeks. Unreal, I just wouldn't be able to physically do that
PP, ES - Very good time to be escaping V40 - in the last few months the standard has gone through the roof. So until June when PP and I escape V40 land, I don't think there will be many pot hunting opportunities in races of a decent standard. Shame
HH
Marders can do one. That's just ridiculous mileage. I think he will become really very tasty at ultra/100k race distance, and fancy some records to tumble.
PP, ES, SC - whippersnappers (we haven't heard that word on here for a while)
Joolska - that's my normal pace at the moment.
OO - Good luck, and enjoy the Estrella or whatever cold fizzy stuff afterwards.
Apparently Marders will be at the session this evening. No doubt he'll be knackered and sluggish after all that mileage, so maybe I'll be able to just hang on to his beard on the way round. Erm...