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Moraghan Training - Stevie G
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Would be quite disconcerting if it wasn't so regular!
Decent session that Reg.
8 x 800 last night on a little part path, part car park course at Luton. Bit breezy, think average was 2.33's. Decent ish.
3rd jab this afternoon as I leave work. Can't believe it's been 6 months since the last one.
We seem to be in a similar covid situation to you, Jools. Limped through ti half term last weekend, but so many reports of more positive cases this week, including quite a few double vaccinated staff 😱.
Great racing, SC. And impressively tidy reps so soon after.
Struggling a little since Sunday’s tough race. Family sickness, lack of sleep (resulting in poor eating then rollercoaster blood sugar levels) and ridiculous stiffness - living up to my name! Sorry, moan over.
A mere mile and a half on Monday, chasing a bike. A pleasant yet slow 12M by the canal on Tuesday. An horrendous 6M pushing the buggy into a strong headwind yesterday and 4M at an incredibly slow 10m/m early this morn.
Picked things up a bit with a bonus treadmill whilst my daughter was at gymnastics early this evening. Getting on the conveyor belt is a rarity for me, but thought it would be a good option to get some speed into my legs without having to give it any real mental fortitude. 5 x 1k, 400 jog. Went from 16.1 kph (6m/m) through to just over 17 on the last one. Who knows how accurate, but nice to do a first session since London.
Wore the orange London t shirt for the first time. Think I am in the minority, but I like it
Roll on tomorrow - half my form are off either with Covid or avoiding it as their families have holidays booked for next week.
More flat 4 milers today & yesterday but a lot swifter as I tried to focus on increased cadence + threw in 5x0.1M strides.
Definitely feeling twitchy from the lack of exercise
Green#1244 on Sunday btw
Get some exercise in post haste Jools
Received my prize for that Marlow 10k win - they've partnered with a company called "Absolute Mug"
You could order one at your own expense for a tenner and £3-4 postage, so the prize was a freebie which was good.
All you really want for a win/placing is something that has what race it is, what the award is on it, be it a medal;/cup/shield/cup or what have we.
So a nice little addition to the locker.
Turned cold now, 6miler including some scrabbling about round the local golf course's paths. Real slow plodding in parts, but rewarded when getting to the peak height in a local village back on nice smooth roads.
A 4 later, and then an xc turn out Sunday.
Our team has loads of quality guys missing, and we can probably still put a decent 6 in Sunday, so I'll hopefully be able to weasel away from things after this one
Though I reserve the right to pop in doe others if I unexpectedly love it Sunday!!
Metros XC, with the base at Hillingdon AC track/leisure centre.
This is one of the XCs I've never done, refusing to get involved in any of this October xc stuff.
Our league always traditionally started with the Dashers event mid November, to match up with Remembrance Sunday.
It served well with that link, the silence, and it being the easiest of the courses, serving as a gentle intro to the series.
However, things change. The Metros event used to be held at "Mad Bess" Woods a bit further near Ruislip type area, but always seemed to be called off as often as it was run. Only ever did that one once.
Felt a little coldy out of the blue on Friday, but better on waking on Sat and better still on Sunday, so was hoping it was just the usual blagger's guidebook, including stuff like everyone insisting they're "taking it easy", or numerous other excuse locker readings.
I'd somehow become a "definite" for this one despite never necessarily intending to do it, however we had a few out, and a "decent" 6 of which I was comfy getting round for 6th if needs be.
I hadn't heard much about this course, aside from a "river" to cross, one that was apparently quite deep one year, with those of short height needing a bit of helping out of!
I'd asked two others what the course was like, one told me it had nothing hills wise, and another told me quite hilly
(In fairness, the "not hilly at all" guy is a hill animal!)
Possibly the closest venue of the season, even with one being just outside my own town!
20mins down the M40, one turn and you're there.
However....a big accident shut 3 lanes down and I was suddenly fretting about getting there.
Having alerted the team to the situation, as it was literally totally stopped, engine off fare, it then seemed to get going quite quickly, with one blackened car sitting in lane 2, and us all getting into lane 4 to get by.
Grabbed one of the last parking spaces at the venue, but a 15min delay to the start time was called, which made sense.
had chatted to one of our newbies, youngster at 25. He tried some blagger's handbook stuff on me, reckoning he was probably in 19min 5k shape (no chance!) and tends to do the fast half "slow" then pick up pace.
300metres or so in then he's passed me and off into the sunset
Ignored that, and ran my own race.
It takes a left round a field, and then tight against the rows of hedges in the middle of the field...and then a very tight turn and...back down the other side of the hedges.
"What the frig?" I think was my exact words at seeing that immediate switchback
More of the same for a bit, round a field, clog up a slight hill field and then left for more of the same!
The hardest bit was into a small wood with quite a steep 100metre or so climb, that then quickly settled, and back on the flat.
It eventually took us into some proper woods, which was a lot more interesting, and then eventually to this famed "river" crossing.
While it was deeper than the "2cm" someone had suggested, it was certainly nowhere as deep as the year they talk about with shock that was much deeper, with midgets at risk of being washed away.
The challenge wasn't the water, but the muddy, greasy bank the other side.
Got out, shouted some stuff out to the people filming and back on our way!
I clocked some guy constantly thanking stewards and I said it's surprising he has the breath at race pace! Said he was more concerned with legs than breath! A few yards after this I overtook and left him.
Another mile or so along a muddyish field, sharp right turn over a little bridge, and we were onto lap 2
I'd sort of given up any idea of catching the Dashers just ahead of me, despite them always being in sight, but you never do know in these events.
One of our supporters, who is a super vet, often top 10 himself at pushing 60, was keeping me honest with his encouragement, popping up all over the place, and without realising I was taking a few places early on in the second lap.
Up the steep bit into the woods, it was a slightly different route I think (!), and I had a real lift when some old boy shouted "21st, well done", as I genuinely had no idea by then.
Once in and out of the water crossing, I was more concerned with the behind than the in front.
While I was happy enough where I was, I did notice that things were opening up in front, people seemed to be coming back to me, without me necessarily upping the ante.
One of the Dashers, a V50 who I always used to beat, but then he started banging 70+ mile weeks for marathons and has beaten me the last 3 or 4 races we've done, and found a new gear was in front. He did a marathon a few weeks before, but...he was in front, so obviously wasn't struggling by any means.
Got right on his tail, we're talking 20cm behind and considered the options!
No one wants to put a big effort in then have a battle for over half a mile
When though, now, over the little bridge, or when the finish line is in sight?
I figured that if you leave it until the prize in sight that might trigger a reaction, so went hard, took one position, then went past a Sheen Shuffler who was going so slowly I genuinely wondered if he was a first lapper still! Turns out he wasn't, just shot away!
Young lad is in sight now, and i go for it...over the bridge and ahead. He looks done for, so I know the two of them aren't coming back.
The finish is still 400m away, slightly uphill now, so it's a long run in!
I hear some resistance behind, but it's Reading, not my boys. Still make sure to hold him off, through a dodgy boggy muddy patch which sparked danger of an embarrassing late slip, but held it off, and over the line for
16th overall and 4th from the club.
That'll do beautifully today. Am sure the men's team will have won, but no idea on the women. The league is a little skewed so a 4 woman team has the same weighting of a 6 man men's team.
However, off to a good start in the men's at least and did my duty.
May not do many of these when some faster guys are back.
I think I surprised our chief supporter as he'd seen me 6th all the way round, so had factored me into his calculations as 6th
Knew he wasn't listening when I told him 4th!
1st position overall was some guest from Reading (i think?) AC woman, who must be knocking on the international scene door to be leading comfortably here. So we'll all be upgraded by 1 in the results as guests don't count.
In fairness, we had the 2nd guy who is a 1hr 15 half guy, so not the same standard as when you had Corney and Kevern the front two! She woulnd't be beating those 2!
Some comedy queuing for ages after a lot of chat and a 0.7mile cool down, keeping one eye on the ticket on the car time running out.
They'd run out of milk, so no drink, so grabbed a few packs of stuff and a banana, and got out of dodge in thenick of time.
Easy 20mins home and hopefully can enjoy the footy coming up!
Still feel a little warm headed/little coldy, but can't be too bad after today. But do look forward to a sleep later
Those TVXC races are always a bit odd when it comes to results. Everyone runs and get a finish token so the positions are known immediately and the times are irrelevant to some degree as the race is declared on positions. It then seems to take several weeks to sort out the team positions due to the oddities of guests and men and women running the same race and a lot of that is caused by unknowns in the results. Someone new will join a club and come along to the race and do well and get a token, hand it in and go home unaware of the reams of paperwork that they need to fill in. In this day and age it should be much easier.
I see a few old thread members had good runs at the weekend.
Spot the face in this photo, start of Newport marathon.
Dachs came 3rd overall and didn't even have a special bib with his name on it.
Matt Lalor also got a 10k PB at Abbey Dash, 31:38 is getting up there with the fast boys: do we have an all-time 10k PB ranking for the thread? There are a few old 'uns out there with fast 10ks in their lockers somewhere.
Otherwise it's a bit like the 5k series, which I used to do the results for at Marlow, very time consuming.
Although you have a list of every club's runners on a spreadsheet to vlook up the names in, you still have to physically key in the race number and time...which were taken in 2 separate lists (you hoped the two added up!!)
Then spend days inevitably mailing the other few clubs asking why they have a blank for a number etc.
As TVXC is triple the amount of clubs I can imagine that's even more fun!
Great work from Dachs and Matt L.
Matt was always a high mileage guy who made my mileage look casual, so to see him still booting pbs out is incredible.
You then get a whole host of media slants on it, so some are pushing the female angle so e.g. the male record in 1977 was 62:57 so marginally slower than that. Well, you know what, men have moved on since then.
You also get the drug accusations (as ever).
Now the trendy thing is genetics, so hyperandrogenism and DSDs. It seems the traditional binary view of sex has been replaced by a spectrum and that means you need to impose an arbitrary cut-off and as soon as you do that it becomes open to manipulation. Apparently, if you have a DSD you can't race a 1,500m "as is" but 3,000m or 5,000m is fine!
Nice run at the XC SG. I almost made it there when we realised we would no longer be able to go to Pembrokeshire for half term. Instead though I had to drive the children down to Cardiff to meet their grandparents halfway. So I do now have a few days without the children.
I think the website it also archaic for TVXC so it usually takes much longer to do the first round of results than the rest.
I picked up a bit of a niggle on Friday halfway through a 12 miler so had to stop and walk over three miles home. It was a small, sharp pain below the ankle bone which I think I had once before. Took Saturday off playing taxi driver for the children and just did a late night zwift ride Sunday. Tested the ankle on the grass field this morning without any obvious reaction, just for 4 miles.
I started conservatively with a 24 minute progressive first 5K. I was running with a mate & we chatted away as we reeled in the 3:15 pacer. He dropped off slightly around 10M to chat with a woman so I was solo from then. Caught the 3:15 pacer at halfway (1:37:28) Planned to sit in to 20M then but found the slight congestion irritating after a few miles & then the pace dropped from 17-18 so I pushed on slightly only to have the pack come back past around 20M. I was feeling it so let them go & then guts revolted. Hopped over a gate into a field for a 💩at mile 21. Struggled to get going again after that. Couldn’t even rouse my legs when my mate caught me with 5M to go. Painful jog to the finish for 3:25:06. My mate did 3:20:04 which was a 3 minute PB so he was happy.
Nightmare with the walk back niggle. Have only had something stop me dead a couple of times. And only once being a 1mile from base.
Makes you think about those runs where you might end up 6-7miles or further off home! At one stage I took a fiver/tenner in my pocket. Think that was more on sweltering hot days. Not sure what the plan was, as I can't imagine busses are exactly plentiful on early Sunday morns out in some random location
Phil - I can't pretend I've ever been too worried about the elites. Just a different sport entirely to what we do.
And I always think this is where it's obvious I'm a footy guy who moved into running, rather than the actual super bred in the wool runners who started on the track as kids, and only care about running.
As for me, tough parkrun at Wendover Woods (20 sec improvement on 2 weeks ago) and 12M yesterday to make my longest run and longest week )40M) since August!
SG, I guess even the most ardent youngsters are going to have a very different view to that of decades ago. We used to have the elites alongside us: I raced world record holders in the national XC, would bump into Steve Ovett on the hills behind Brighton and you would see them turn out to help their clubs in a league match. All very different now.
Phil - the Science in Sport podcast with Ross Tucker is excellent regarding DSD in sport.
Good effort, Jools. Not least a nine min mile with a 💩!
You’re putting together some sessions, Bus 👍
Away in chester over the weekend and unfortunately didn’t manage to squeeze in a run. So just 43M for the week, but not to worry.
Met a friend (who is on a massive upward trajectory) for the Three Hills of Cleeve this morning. Having him there seemed to really help, and despite him speeding off on the final climb, I ran my second fastest in fifteen attempts on the segment.
I was quicker than him downhill, although not through any real attempt to push it. An experience thing, I guess. And good conditioning for the quads in advance of the Broadway marathon.
All in 11.8M (with some extra flat added at the end), 1600ft for 7:50 pace.
What would you target if it was a proper tapered, targeted marathon... without what Moz said to me years ago... "bringing the turds along"
SQ - ta, it was the classic XC fare where half of it you're thinking, this is slow, this isn't great, as you're togging across fields seemingly at a max of steady pace, but then all of a sudden you pass a few people and it feels brilliant
Hard with tactics sometimes, as often in XC if you let someone go early doors, you lack the bother to reel them in later, they're gone. But clearly if you go off too hard, it can be a miserable second half. Sunday I probably got spot on by setting off decently, but certainly not too silly.
I noticed from the video, that the woman winner - the same one who beat me by around 4mins at the Marlow 10k (albeit her wave 1, me wave 3, so never saw her), was only about 15th after the first 300m or so. Yet apparently eased to the win overall.
Bus, you're going decently from nowhere again! The beauty of this sport - it's never over, it just takes time
A couple of potential race hoons you might be interested in coming up, I'll PM you
10k pb is 3550 or so at Goring 10k which I believe isn't a fast course, which is pretty strong on the ladies side as it is, but needs to be remembered that was pre covid, 18months ago.
She's clearly come on massively, as she did 3750 or so at that Marlow 10k I did, and I keep referencing my personal Marlow- Silverstone improvement of 5mins!
5mins!
Yes, I was blocked in for a bit, and not particularly an XC specialist where she clearly is, so I can't imagine she'd also have 5mins to come off, but every chance 3.30-4mins off that 3750. I wouldn't be surprised if she's a sub 34 10k on the flat now.
She apparently comfortably beat the top men at the weekend, one of whom was one of our guys, who is fresh from a 75.41 HM last week. That's my exact pb, so I would roughly say he could match my 10k pb, 34.30, which would mean sub 34 for the first woman would make sense.
And sub 34 for 10k would get her top 40 in the country, so getting quite serious now!
After the race and seeing off the borderline cold, I thought I'd make this a medium quality session as well as covering the medium long aspect.
8x2mins effort off 2mins, and then a couple of 1min efforts late doors.
As I like to get 2.5miles or so normal running in first, it does mean you always have the steep offroad hill to deal with, and I'll be honest, the "effort" is barely faster than the "easy" up that bit.
Think 2 heavy goods vehicles on the motorway!
Probably only hitting about 6min miling at most for the top end, but that's ok. These sessions feel so different to proper efforts with a stop recovery, and exact same route/surface.
I'm sure it all adds a decent benefit up though.
15.04 to 31.27 are his pbs
15.14 to 33.00 being his 2021 stuff, which makes more sense!
Last 5 TVXC races he's been either 1st or 2nd, so not like he's not an xc guy either!
no sign of the results yet, so I assume you've picked him out on strava or something.
The website seems a difficult one to sort to say the least!
I remember in my great PO10 account tidy up of a few years ago getting into right stormy waters having the audacity of asking an old pal at Sandhurst to click the "confirm results" button, as PO10 wouldn't publish them until that happened!
"I'm still looking into queries" was the answer...
3 months after the last race, and whole series result had long been declared
Three hours on the bike and a 4k swim today, my arms were dropping off after 40 x 100m!
Not posted as I picked up that annoying non covid cold last week, so not done any sessions. Felt a bit rough over the weekend, thought it was done, now woken up with a headache today and still blowing the nose.
Went down to see the folks in Poole- ran around Upton Park parkrun with the lad, he was only 14 secs off his PB on a much harder course, we did 22.39. Took him to watch Bournemouth for the first time, picked up a couple of last minute tickets Friday morning.
Then a run back from Junior Parkrun Sunday, past my old house and both piers. Long walk over Purbeck Monday, nothing much running wise since. Shame as Last Friday is out of the window now too...
I upped my underwhelming 5k tempo last week to 6k this week. Pace was up a bit too, couple of miles warm up then 6k at just under 5:50 per mile and a cool down home. Pretty happy with that, calf was a bit sore after but fitness is improving.
I don't know what it is, but some people just seem to glide and others struggle. Just look at Chris Bradfield from Datchet: strolls round and comes in top 10 easy peasy lemon squeezy.
However while he's blessed with incredible natural ability, minimal weight and mountain goat hill ability, he'll spend months each year injured unfortunately.
And won't come near xc if not reasonably fit.
I don't blame him on the last line, I've probably only felt super fit a couple of series in a decade!!
Our Super vet is similar. Does track reps probably quicker than I would sprint. Competes in grand sounding masters events. But spends at least a third of the year injured, currently out for 2months.
Looks promising Reg.
I fancy some half mile reps tomo. Just across parks and town. Will work out how many tomorrow but something akin to the recent 7x1km sort of mix.
Just aiming for sub 6 really. Never as drilled down as a track would be, but easier straight out the door.
Paces,
5.56, 5.54, 5.54, 5.48, 5.53, 5.48, 5.49, 5.54
Bits and pieces into wind, a couple mostly / totally on grass, others maybe a road to cross/hazards, but other bits lovely and smooth - so the full kaboodle really.
Nice run around.
Will probs do a 4miler in the woods route later, and then a 13 will take me to a 60mile week.