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Plenty of down-time for me August 2020 to February 2021 so I'm sure I'm due a return eventually.
The LT sessions get easier over time Gul. You need to get a chest HR strap.
7.5 recovery miles early evening. A bit warm out there! Brings up 318 miles for May at an average pace of 7:53/m.
SBD - great miles for May. Glad I run early doors, but not good race prep I guess.
Same number of sub 3s and sub 80s for me
10 easy miles a bit earlier this morning. Back to work for a rest
Injury and the second jab robbed a chunk of May training, so I had to settle for 111 miles. I binned the weekend runs so I could work on some big jobs in the garden and use June 1st as a marker for VLM 21 campaign training start.
The garden work saw me do some good core stuff, actually, with demolition on a 10x8 shed and cutting it into pieces for recycling and disposal. Fence building, ground clearing and log chopping (all manly with an axe and everything!).
Just back from the London campaign start. 6 miles at 7.08 pace and it was blooming hot!
Broke out some box fresh Nike Infinity React to kick things off. Nice shoe.
I've brought the campaign start forward a fortnight to make it an 18 weeker. As mentioned, lost some training in May so want 2 weeks for bedding in the new regime discipline and then get into the real structured sessions from 16 weeks out. It will be a pain at times but also nice to have real focus again, even though this is the third time of starting this flipping campaign!
Ouchouch, diolch! It's been a surprising but enjoyable turn of fitness after so many years of tiny gains. Something has obviously just fallen into place. I'm not sure my mind could cope with a few more years of gains, I'm already at a level beyond where I ever felt possible. I've got my eye on the concept of one of those age group representative vests over half mara now though.
Speedy, it is an interesting comparison. I have to go back to 2008 for the last time my body got a sustained down period, prior to last year. Perhaps it's just what was needed by us. The other common theme is we both use a coach.
Jools, I recall badly turning my ankle a few years ago. It Was slightly swollen and stiff at times still 8 months later. Hopefully it'll settle for you soon enough.
Decent total, oo. I came in at 187. Sbd, that's a monster total. What's your biggest ever month?
Good plan, gdawg.
Easy 4m recovery Monday morning before travelling, nothing today but lots of walking and planning an easy run tomorrow.
Racing again Sunday, leg 9 of the cotswold hilly 100. Just looking at strava data from a runner in 2019, mile 5 has 444 foot of decline. Sounds like I'll be abseiling pretty much!
I'd imagine that as part of the process I've decided to get to a much sharper racing weight as well and that wouldn't have happened if I wasn't so engaged.
DT - have a great break. Sounds like an interesting leg! And yes, a good coach obviously makes a big difference.
6 mile recovery run today.
Here's an interview I gave for a club podcast in case you want my pearls of wisdom😆
https://anchor.fm/mark-smith36/episodes/Episode-16---Greg-Penn-e11vkps
Good recovery miles Gul.
Enjoy the down time and the fells DT. It would be interesting to know what Lewis would make of my training - probably tell me to run less volume and do more speed work. I've been doing 325-345 miles per month during recent marathon campaigns. For some strange reason I ran 350 miles in July 2020 which is probably the max.
Good to see you're back in campaign mode G-D. Not sure of the marathon specificity of the weekend S&C work but Putin would be impressed!
10K tempo effort as the middle section of a 10 miler yesterday early evening. Pace decreasing by a few seconds for the same HR compared to previous weeks, so progress of sorts, but still plenty of work to do. Followed by a steady 13 miles in rather sultry conditions this evening.
Warm day. Got up early to get 5 easy miles done on the trails before work and in the evening hit the track for some nice short quicker stuff. Session was 400, 800 and 300 (x3) all done at sub-6.00 pace.
Blooming warm but good to get the legs turning quicker again. Need to be smart with recovery, mind.
SBD - nice tempo run with s bit if improvement.
GD - good double there with some quality too.
17 miles to this morning ranging from slow to easy to steady pace. First long run in quite a while.
A humble 6 for me yesterday including beach zigzags 🤭
6 for me too today.
Six is still good OO - the zigzag training should help in those initial Berlin/London miles.
A good double G-D with a nice turn of pace on the intervals.
Progressive Friday here, so 12 miles late afternoon with the pace decreasing from 8:27/m to 6:26/m. Heart rate at 170 for the last mile, which is tempo effort. So 1 mile at MP, just need to find a way to increase that to 26.2.
Back on with the trail shoes this morning and did 12 miles around various local woods and trails.
Easy 5 recovery tomorrow should bring 43 for the week and a nice topper to training week 1.
A good week back on the campaign trail G-D.
18 miles late afternoon, so setting off at 4:30pm. Still a bit warm but at least there was a light breeze. Had planned to run it nice and easy but the legs got in to a good rhythm early on and it was hard to slow them down. So slight progressive averaging 7:38/m and 75 miles for week 2 of the Berlin Campaign. Feeling suitably wrecked now so recovering with a few beers.
Being back in the office a few days a week is ruining my internet time. No phone signal at all in there and we're not allowed to use t'internet for anything other than work. Plus I'm losing 1 hour 20 mins of potential training time each day to the commute. Not loving it!
Anyway, 5000m at the Midlands Champs today. For a change I was not the only woman in the race, in fact there were quite a few, although only one other in my age category. It was all the women plus men over 60. Luckily there were 2 M60s who were speedy. One shot off on lap one, the other initially sat in behind me but after a couple of laps decided to give chase to the Nuneaton chap. By about lap 8 or 9 I'd caught them both up. They must have been slowing, as I certainly hadn't sped up, and I wondered if I ought to go past, but decided to catch my breath behind them for a lap or two and see what the lap times were. They were only 1 second off what I wanted, and honestly I was working very hard to stick with them, so trying to go past and take it on didn't seem wise. I figured if I could cling on until the last 100m I'd stand a good chance in a sprint finish, given the 20 year age gap. They were obviously most concerned with racing each other. I wasn't particularly relevant to them. Trentham moved out wide to pass Nuneaton, but Nuneaton was wise to it and also started to move wide, blocking Trentham's path and... leaving a delicious gap on the inside. I bolted and took the win. Trentham won the battle of the M60s and joked he'd get me next time because he doesn't like being chicked. 18.39.13, which is a lifetime PB over all surfaces.
Sbd, nice work on week 2. Enjoy the beers. I'm sat here now having a few. Re Lewis, he is very pragmatic in that he doesn't train everyone to one method. He wants you to enjoy what you do and we all enjoy different approaches. What he does is find the best way to get the most out of you by maintaining what you like, but of course often to get better we have to do some of what we don't like!
Solid week 1, Gul and good to see you returning to some obscenely early starts.
Nice start also, gdawg.
A nice trip to the lakes with runs Wednesday and Thursday. Back Friday late evening then easy 5 Saturday.
Today was the cotswold hilly 100. Its organised by Stratford AC and is 10 legs of about 10m each but all but leg 1 are horribly hilly, and leg 1's lack of hills is offset by a 7am start. I was on leg 9 of our men's team (we also had a mixed team). My leg was 9.75m and I felt I could go sub 60. With a 3.50pm Start though it was warm and sunny and the first half is tough with much of the climbing of the leg in first 4m then mile 5 is about 400ft of downhill so almost too aggressively downhill to be useful.
Due to the nature of the event this was a complete solitary TT and with the team not in top 3 and no specific personal pb such as a10m to chase I found it hard to suffer second half.
I think I got my pacing wrong and by mile 3 I was blowing and drenched in sweat. I possibly detrimentally affected the last few miles which were gently downhill. Miles were 6.00, 6.12, 7.14, 6.40, 5.26, 6.06, 5.58, 6.15, 6.12 and 6.17, coming in at 60.43 for 6.13mm.
I think I was our clubs 2nd fastest on day with our fastest being the flattish leg 1 and I was 2nd or 3rd on my leg looking on strava. Disappointed to not be sub 60, but coming off last weeks half then a holiday and on a warmish, sunny day, I'll take it.
That's 3 races in succession so time now to pull that back and get a good block of training in now before my improbable lanzarote holiday end of July.
Speedy - excellent work and great tactical racing; you are coming into some good form.
DT - that's a very solid leg and a great result, well done.
13 miles this morning. Started off with some easy miles undulating through the woods and then took a new footpath (to me) which was a bit narrow and overgrown, got stung, and then came out at the local golf course. Finished the rest of the run with steady miles on pavement.
Gul, sounds like a fun bit of exploring. Any golfers out playing at 6am??
Speedy, had the call today re office return. Basically my boss had her 2nd jab last week and suddenly feels it's OK for us to start returning in a few weeks!! However we are only going to be asked to attend the office 2 days a week going forwards, which isn't too bad. I can just plan my training around it to get the best from things.
Solid effort DT hope you enjoyed the Lakes.
My total was 52 last week. I skipped a Sunday long run to focus on tonight track races- Masters 1500 and 800. Conditions look perfect.
I think my fitness is quite good but totally lacked energy on the night. Probably a combination of poor fuelling, and the mistake of an energetic swim in the morning. I've actually felt sluggish for a few days so not sure is there is a deeper cause going on.
In spite of all that it was a great night. Lots of late evening sun, great turnout and a really good vibe after months of no racing.
6 mile recovery run today.
Nice early 6, Gul. I tried to emulate you today.
Woke up early and lay in bed knowing I should get my Tuesday 10 done before work rather than in the predicted scorching lunchtime temps, I just couldn't be bothered.
Had a word with myself, got up and bashed out 10 miles at 7.06 pace. Very happy with that this early in the campaign and that early in the morning. I don't do mornings.
Already over 20 degrees when I got back, so it was a good decision. Smug face!