Shades Marathon Training

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Comments

  • JellyJelly ✭✭✭
    Wishing you a speedy recovery. You are very lucky, running buddies of mine couldn't run for 12 months due to head injury. 
  • Big_GBig_G ✭✭✭
    Crikey MF - you haven't had a great year with incidents!  I hope you get better soon!
  • E mmyE mmy ✭✭✭
    Mamafox - What an injury :( I hope that you're feeling better today. I hope that 2018 is better for you.

    Big G/Shades - the rules about what counts and how is something that they're working on at the moment. They threw out all of the work I did last year (because a certain person then in charge told everyone it was crap and few people read it to disagree with him). The events like Foxy's classification is a real joke as he has substantial off-road and in all due purpose, it's multi-terrain, not road. I think some of the rules will kick the club in its ass as it's about as clear as mud.

    Has anyone had inaccuracies with HR monitors in cold weather? It was -3 this morning and my HR was spiking at 180/190 and I was taking it easy/not out of breath. Any ideas anyone?
  • Big_GBig_G ✭✭✭
    edited December 2017
    Hi Emmy, I hope you had a good Xmas etc.

    I can understand why there needs to be rules, but some of them are a bit odd.  That one around the event categorisation is a strange one.  Also, there seems to be a dislike of road races, generally, certainly amongst the "wannabes" anyway.  I don't really understand that - can you shed any light on it?  What I mean is, a fairly large section of the group seem to struggle to get the required number of road marathons in, and I don't understand why that is; I've just checked and only 10 of the 100 have to be road marathons!  I suppose one reason is that some road marathons have relatively tight cut offs (say 6hrs, which really is still quite generous!) whereas I suppose some events like Foxy's often have very lenient cutoffs so is more inclusive I suppose?  Some road marathons can be pricey, but there are many that are bargains, or at least cheaper than the likes of Foxy's, so I don't think it's a price thing either.  It's not like these people do what I'd call "proper" off road events (i.e., out in the mud/trails etc) as they often do Foxy's, SVN and Phoenix events.  Or is that the bling sometimes isn't as good from a road event?!  Baffled!

    Edited to add, I suppose if someone wants to get to 100 very quickly (i.e, in 1year or something), they could more easily do 100 of the likes of Phoenix/SVN/Enigma and not do any road marathons at all, so the fact that 10 have to be road could be a hinderance to them I suppose?

    To be honest, and I know I'm in the minority here(!!!), I wouldn't object if a much higher percentage had to be road marathons.  And by road marathon, I mean "proper" road marathons ran on an actual road...

    I've just double checked and actually an event has to have 25 competitors to finish in order to count (earlier in the thread I had previously said it was 15).
  • MF - Hopefully you'll have a injury free 2018

    Shades/BG/Emmy - Classing some of Foxy's as non road is tenuous as Furzton is 17 laps of paved pathway from memory and zero grass, plenty of duck poo though ;) Plenty of road races have pavement bits you are meant to go on to be away from traffic. Willen has the sizeable off road bit near the end and Caldecote has the short bit across the grass bottom end of the lake but also some gravel stretches.

  • E mmyE mmy ✭✭✭
    @keith: he’s mainly talking about caldicotte being the road one specifically as thats the one that was messaged.

    @big G : I’ve got my theories based on talking to a lot of wannabes. It’s a mix of things: they perceive road races as too competitive (if you look at the average finish time now, I’d expect it’s nearer to 6-6.30) and it’s too expensive. I think that’s a false argument as if you look at the price of the “back garden events” they’re £35-45 a pop. 

    Also, a few wannabes have said that they think the definitions in general are out of date and should be removed as a marathon is a marathon and it doesn’t matter what surface as long as it meets the main criteria. 

    as you say: if you can do a 100 marathons in a year at the smaller events then being forced to do a nominated number of road would limit them somewhat. 

    I found that I had enough road just with my European marathons that I’ve done (Amsterdam, Leiden, Barcelona). A lot of the bigger races are road only.
  • Ian5Ian5 ✭✭✭
    MF-terrible end to the year you've had,hope you recover well.
    10 miles today,temp was fine but very windy and the last 2 miles were against the wind and mainly uphill so tough last stretch.
  • JellyJelly ✭✭✭
    I haven't really looked at 100 club rules as not really in my sights yet, but 10 Road doesn't sound that hard, I've done 3 road this year and 5  booked/planned  for next and that's without thinking about 100 club. Makes me sad when I hear the us and them with Road and Trail runners. I've had one person say to me you road runners, just because I ran London. I soon told him I'm a runner regardless what I run on. I enjoy both aspects of terrain and think verity is the spice of life. 
  • Big_GBig_G ✭✭✭
    Keith, agree with the duck/goose/swan poo!  The last one I did it was all mixed up with the slippery/icy/mushy water.  Lovely!

    Talking about pavements, Abingdon is an example which is a road marathon and I think that is correct, although a lot of it is on pavements.  To me, it wouldn't make sense to have that categorised anything other than a road marathon though....even though it was a dull course!

    I suppose it's not that clear cut all the time on what a course is and I agree there has to be guidelines, but still some of the rules do throw up strange results/possibilities sometimes.

    Emmy, I can see the argument that a marathon is a marathon, so remove any obligation to do any road events.  However, I personally think that road events should have something to do with it.  Not sure if I get that view because I grew up watching London, but when I personally think of a marathon, I think of a road event.  As I say, I know I may well be in the minority though!

    I also don't understand that competitive argument that some target against road events.  I don't get that at all - so what if some people want to be competitive?  You can still have a laugh and take your time if you want to, on the majority of road events.  Even at Foxy's, for example, some still want to be competitive and win the event, or get a GFA/PB or something.  I don't understand why that would put people off of an event.  Taking the extreme, London is arguably the most competitive marathon in the world, but I don't see how that puts regular runners off of wanting to do it.

    There is another side of the coin too.  Since I've been doing a few more events, I've come across a people who have left the 100MC because in their view, it's now almost too easy to get into the club.  When a few of the runners earned their vest, it was much tougher to find the events to do in order to qualify.  These days it's relatively easy, and they'd argue it's lessened the achievement, so they no longer run in the vest.  I was talking to quite a few who share this view when I did that Nottingham event.  These people tended to be the quicker runners, mind you, so they probably disagree with some of the time cut offs too.

    None of this is a dig at you, Emmy and I know it's not necessarily you making those arguments you mentioned above.  It's just I don't fully agree with some of the discussions that go on around the 100MC rules, but like I say I think I'm in the minority.

    The cynical side of me would say that some of the rules could be there to help a few popular RD's... ;)  
  • Big_GBig_G ✭✭✭
    Jelly, cross post.  I've done 26 marathons in all, and 13 have been road marathons.  Even this year when I did 20 events, 8 have been road events for 100MC purposes.  I don't think I need to worry about it as I've already got my 10 road races if I ever do get to 100, but some people do seem to struggle to get those 10.

    For info, if you do have 100MC in mind, start maintaining a spreadsheet of race results as it'll be a pain in the neck to get the results later on if you don't keep up to date with it all.  A template to use is on the 100MC site.
  • JellyJelly ✭✭✭
    Yes got template as would like to keep record of marathons and bonus if I get to 100  thank you. How big is the committee on 100 club is it the case of too many cooks.  Must be hard to keep order if everyone is spread all over the country. 
  • Big_GBig_G ✭✭✭
    Jelly, I don't know about the committee side of 100MC.  Probably Shades/Emmy/Mowzer know much more about that side of it than I do.
  • E mmyE mmy ✭✭✭
    Big G: I’m in complete agreement with you actually and I’d go so far to limit other things (e.g max number of challenge events for example). 

    I could have a rant about how difficult it is to get changes through but in reality the club is a very different one to the one I joined in 2015 and some of my views now represent the minority rather than the majority. I think we MUST keep the road marathons to encourage and ensure the survival of smaller races in the uk. I think there’s a real danger of races being removed from the calendar because they can’t compete with the 8hr walk-a-thons /let’s eat cake and not actually run. 

    When I was on my journey to 100, a person was criticised for walking a marathon (they were injured at the time) and told that if you can’t run it, it shouldn’t count. There are now people walking marathons in 9-10hrs and they count. In the Dutch 100 club they have the time rule that timed events have minimum distances. Examples being:
    - 6hrs : 50k
    - 12hrs: 50 miles 

    i tried to propose that and was shot down spectacularly as it’s “not inclusive”. I said: that’s the point. We’re not the LDWA 100 club.

    Jelly: the club committee is too small. They’ve tried to expand it in the last year due to some nasty going ons against club members. 


  • Big_GBig_G ✭✭✭
    edited December 2017
    Emmy, yeah, I agree.  When I first started doing Enigma events, to be honest I was quite surprised that when the gun went off people just started walking right from the start.  There was very little attempt to run at all by some.  On the one hand it's great that these events are inclusive and open to everyone, but surely there should be some attempt to at least try and run some of it, but how a rule can be made for that I'm not sure?  Don't get me wrong; I've walked quite a lot on a couple of mine, this year.  I did a really hot one and had to walk about 3 laps out of 7 otherwise I thought I may DNF.  I also picked up an injury at another one so walked about 5ish miles just to get it done as walking didn't seem to make the injury worse.  But in both cases I just did my best to get it done on the day, whereas setting out to walk the whole way somehow doesn't seem in the spirit of it in my view.  Maybe I'm old fashioned in that though?  Don't know.  I know this would be virtually impossible to administer, but it's almost like an age grading % would work well, but I know that will never get adopted even if it was possible to administer.  The very generous cut offs obviously help RDs fill their events.....

    Yes, the Challenge events do seem to be an anomaly.  My understanding is that say there are 25+ finishers across any distance that is on offer at a Challenge event, then it counts for 100MC, even if significantly less than 25 did the marathon distance or more.  Yet, if an event specifically advertises the marathon distance but less than 25 finish it, it doesn't count. Seems odd.  From the FAQ:  "As a Challenge event is a timed ultra then there must be a minimum of 25 starters for an event to count. There doesn’t have to be 25 finishers of marathon or greater distance, but there must be 25 starters".  In practice, a Challenge event could have 1 person doing the marathon distance and 24 doing a 5K, but it would count for that one marathoner.
  • SHADESSHADES ✭✭✭✭
    Emmy - I think the problem with the proposals that you put forward was that you submitted them all in one block so one tiny thorn could enable the whole lot to be thrown out.   I did disagree with bits of it but the main one that was a real problem was the one about when a new event is set up and a leniency in the rules about numbers or permits or whatever for an initial period, that alone was enough for the whole proposal to be rejected.   

    I have heard some folk say that in very cold weather their HRM spikes but never happened to me, most likely inadequate contact, you're cold so no sweat, or maybe an electrical storm nearby.

    Big G - The 100MC club has never been elitist about fast times but I think the new wave of wannabees don't train and want to just potter round the same courses telling themselves and others how well they are doing with all the 'marathons' that they are running.   You're not being cynical about certain RD's either and their events are certainly overpriced.   I'm just about to enter a couple of road marathons, proper road marathons that is ;) where there is police presence to deal with traffic, one is £25 the other £23. 

    Unfortunately completing a 100 marathons can be done now without ever leaving Kent or MK and all these events has in effect damaged our sport.  I don't have the same respect for those achieving their 100 now and if I see one of those hideous 52 in 52 shirts I just think how foolish they are for paying for a shirt that looks like a cheap football shirt.  

    But I do have respect and admiration for those that train and try to do their best in their events, I don't care if they run road or trail. 

    But the 100MC always used to encourage members to do different events such as by achieving the Counties badge which you get when you've done marathons in 50 different Counties.  I reached my 50 Counties a few years ago, Counties did include Ireland too as the club was UK and Ireland MC.

    Abingdon used to be all road and was for years, no running on pavements at all, but now they've changed the course.

    There are a lot of 100MC that never or rarely run trail events.   I'm no longer a member but I've only done 21 trail marathons, 66 ultras (some but not many of those were trail) and the rest of my total is made up of all road marathons.

    Jelly - the 100MC committee isn't huge and they manage fine, I was a committee member for a few years. The whinging comes from the club members mostly the newer full members and the wannabees and the bitching on FB, which the club can't control as quite a lot of the members don't know how to behave, part of the reason I left the club.   There have also been some poor decisions made in the last couple of years.   

    Of course you don't have to join the 100MC, you can always join the Irish club, you're eligible after completing one marathon, lovely people and much nicer kit :)


  • You also need road marathons as unlike Foxy's and the other similar ones the road ones quite often are city ones so will have a few thousand runners or more which gives people who want to do one marathon for whatever reason the oppprtunity to do so with usually good event organisation and support.
  • SHADESSHADES ✭✭✭✭
    Big_G said:
    Emmy, yeah, I agree.  When I first started doing Enigma events, to be honest I was quite surprised that when the gun went off people just started walking right from the start.  There was very little attempt to run at all by some.  On the one hand it's great that these events are inclusive and open to everyone, but surely there should be some attempt to at least try and run some of it, but how a rule can be made for that I'm not sure?  Don't get me wrong; I've walked quite a lot on a couple of mine, this year.  I did a really hot one and had to walk about 3 laps out of 7 otherwise I thought I may DNF.  I also picked up an injury at another one so walked about 5ish miles just to get it done as walking didn't seem to make the injury worse.  But in both cases I just did my best to get it done on the day, whereas setting out to walk the whole way somehow doesn't seem in the spirit of it in my view.  Maybe I'm old fashioned in that though?  Don't know.  I know this would be virtually impossible to administer, but it's almost like an age grading % would work well, but I know that will never get adopted even if it was possible to administer.  The very generous cut offs obviously help RDs fill their events.....

    Yes, the Challenge events do seem to be an anomaly.  My understanding is that say there are 25+ finishers across any distance that is on offer at a Challenge event, then it counts for 100MC, even if significantly less than 25 did the marathon distance or more.  Yet, if an event specifically advertises the marathon distance but less than 25 finish it, it doesn't count. Seems odd.  From the FAQ:  "As a Challenge event is a timed ultra then there must be a minimum of 25 starters for an event to count. There doesn’t have to be 25 finishers of marathon or greater distance, but there must be 25 starters".  In practice, a Challenge event could have 1 person doing the marathon distance and 24 doing a 5K, but it would count for that one marathoner.

    xpost Big G - I absolutely agree with you there.   The Challenge event is just a cop out really.   It's such a shame to see our sport being damaged this way.


  • SHADESSHADES ✭✭✭✭
    Right I'm just off to check how many of my ultras are not road.....
  • SHADESSHADES ✭✭✭✭
    I've done 15 Trail Ultras, 10 Tartan Track and 41 Road.
  • Big_GBig_G ✭✭✭
    Shades, just to say, I tend to keep my views to myself on Facebook and don't go ranting on there at all - you unfortunate lot on here get my thoughts instead ;)  I did once get into a discussion with Foxy on a Facebook group, there was the implication that Abingdon was elitist, and I politely disagreed with that.  Just because it attracts faster runners, doesn't mean it's elitist.  The fact that the cut off isn't suitable for some, still doesn't make it elitist in my view!  Foxy said something like "Tell an 6hr runner that Abingdon isn't elitist" and I just replied that yes, I would say that to a 6hr runner.  I never put something on here or on Facebook that I wouldn't say in person.
  • SHADESSHADES ✭✭✭✭
    Big G - Incidentally in Ireland the majority of marathons are road and they generally have much more generous time limits and allow walkers to take part too.  Even a big city marathon such as Cork will have a 7 hour limit.   But strangely in Ireland the walkers walk as fast as they can and the runners too do their best on the day, different attitude than the type of 'runner's that the 'back garden' events attract here.
  • SHADESSHADES ✭✭✭✭
    Big G - you're right Abingdon isn't elitist, the time limit is set by the police.  If the police object to a more generous time limit the race permit will not be granted and the race will die.   Foxy is talking bullshit on that topic.   If he ever put on a proper road race he would know that. :# 

    Well the 100MC club FB page is not for ranting on and slagging others off but that unfortunately is what some of the members do, shame on them not knowing how to behave.
  • E mmyE mmy ✭✭✭
    I don’t engage on Facebook about any 100 club stuff. I look but never comment as I don’t want any of the hassle anymore. 

    Shades : we only submitted the proposals like that because we were told that’s how it was done and the process we needed to follow. It was a complete mess and for that I’m frustrated and annoyed about on my part. 

    Big G: as you’ve seen in Holland, most of the races here have hard cut offs of 5/5.30 and they will enforce. I’ve seen one recently that was a trail race in one of the national parks that had a 4hr 30 cut off and if you weren’t through half way by 1.50 , you’d be stopped. 
  • Ian5Ian5 ✭✭✭
    Shades-Had to quickly Google tartan track then,wasn't if it was as simple as it seemed.
    Glad I'm never going to have to worry about getting to 100,thinking maybe 6 this year max which would take me to 13 in total so long long way and I don't think I'll ever do what Big G has managed this year.
    I've started looking at my training and starting to think I haven't done enough miles for GC,long runs have been great but overall mileage has struggled with work.
  • SHADESSHADES ✭✭✭✭
    Emmy - I know it was unfortunate re your proposals as there was a lot of good stuff in there.

    Ian - ha, ha at tartan track, it's an athletic track, usually 400m.   Tartan track is the name of the surface.

    Don't worry about your training mileage, you've still got all that good summer training in the bank.   And your long runs have been good strong runs.  Just stay injury and virus free and you'll be fine.   don't forget you'll need sun cream for this marathon........while we all freeze here ;)  
  • Ian5Ian5 ✭✭✭
    Shades-When I googled and it came up with a picture of a track I said to myslef "obviously idiot"  :D
    I forget I done lots of strong miles from may really,think it's because 2 of my last 5 weeks have only been around 25 weeks,but the other 3 were 50+ Just need to see how I go there then build for Manchester.
  • Big_GBig_G ✭✭✭
    Emmy, although I've only done one Dutch marathon (Leiden, that we were both at) it was amongst the friendliest and most welcoming event I've done, so another example that a cut off doesn't make it elitist.  Abingdon itself was really friendly - I pretty much finished in the last third of the field, but I was encouraged all the way around.  But yes, a handful of the people at some Enigma events would have missed the cut off at Leiden/Abingdon.  

    Ian, I think you've been training really well.  That 20-miler you did the other week at a really consistent pace bodes really well for 2018, I'd say!
  • SHADESSHADES ✭✭✭✭
    Ian - I don't know why it's called Tartan though, a very odd name.

    You've taken so well to the higher mileage.  A lighter week to some is a relief but to you feels like you're not doing enough.

    Big G - I'm sure that a lot of the Enigma runners could run faster if they had to, but they don't need to bother if they have a very generous cut off.

    I'm waiting for the 7 a.m. booking slot for Pilates class, I even had to do this on Xmas Day although the places didn't go so quickly.

    I was woken by recycling stuff being blown along our road, just popped out to put out our food bins and someone's box has blown into our garden, not sure where it's come from so sneaked it back across the road.  Really mild out, about 12 degrees, looking forward to my run.
  • SHADESSHADES ✭✭✭✭
    Tartan track is a trademark name, manufactured by 3M
  • Thank you everyone, yes, an injury free 2018 is definitely on my wish list.

    My GP has strongly suggested that I take up knitting  :)
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