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I'll forgive you FR, it's not like you really had any time to work things out! Congrats on the pb too and your shiny thing will no doubt get to you.
Selbs - Plan is to do Berlin so I should start putting a more concrete schedule in place since it's about 15 weeks away. Anyone else down for Berlin?
Sounds like some nice training going on in general and lots of x training and x talking too! Sounds like I need a wetsuit to make me swim fast but I'd be happy if it just made me float.
Marders - are you English yet ?
More bike time at lunchtime for me and track later.
Go hard or go home
Not going to do any more serious tilts at flat marathons.
I loved every second of Saturday's race; I loved letting my mind wander on the easier bits, loved thrashing myself to death on the climbs, loved the banter and the glorious unpredictability. Can't really see any real upside to another serious tilt at 300-mile months and speed sessions just for yet another disappointing VLM or absolute-best-case grimly satisfying 2:5n, whereas can see unlimited upside to ambling around the hills with my dog and spending weekends at the river watching my boys rowing (number 2 has signed up now too).
Might carry on posting here from time to time, and would like to do next year's VLM as, however annoying the concept may be, the Olympic angle will make it a bit of a special one. It'll just be training for the Three Forts though. Obviously didn't say that on the GFA form.
Haven't posted for a while since my holiday but have been lurking. Marders going from strength to strength and just whetting our appetites for his Berlin marathon in the Autumn. Speaking of which my 18 week P&D schedule started today with an easy 6; can't say I feel the 'buzz' I've got from the start of my previous training programs.
Apart from a couple of 'Parkruns' I did my first post VLM race yesterday. I found 3 miles tempo (6m/m) on the Saturday much harder than expected so was quite pleased with the av pace of 6.12 at the undulating/windy/rainy Puddletown Plod 20K which lived up to its name with some impressive puddles to wade through. Ended up with 6th overall (1st in age) thanks to a couple in front pullling up with niggles. 76:58.
MtR - the Dorney one might be a good introduction and should have a flat swim ! Is the 1/2 mara a build up race or a target race ?
Selbs - thats about the healthiest I ever remember you coing back from a holiday.
Marders - astounding as ever. I'm still proud of having run a few miles next to you.
Gobi - bike at lunchtime ! nice one.
MrB - nice to see you, back on the campaign trail again too.
Tmap - VLM doesnt have to be disappointing. Pancake flat, no wind, a massive cheering crowd and loads of folks to run with is the best its going to get. But if your hearts not in it and you think it will be disappointing then I'm sure you'd be right.
5x400/15sec rest in the lido at lunch, that was a toughie.
Marders -- double wow!
Mr Boat -- nicely done in the 20k. As CL and I have discovered, 20k results are great for getting an impressive UK ranking on PowerOf10...!
Mr B - Which P&D plan are you following this time?
Marders - Very nice 5k. The half was just like a marathon pace training run though wasn't it?
Tmap - Sounds like you've found a great way to enjoy running marathons
selbs - You're going pretty well for a man who's essentially waiting for the right time to have surgery!
I also ran the puddletown plod 20k. The wettest road race I've ever run. I hadn't run all week or slept much so struggled to get going until I hung onto the back of somebody as they went past me. Unfortunately I had to let go up a hill. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise as he was part of a group of 7 or 8 ahead of me who went the wrong way - in fact I got called back by the guy behind me but the others were gone and out of sight by the time that the next person behind him confirmed the correct way to go. Quite a few unhappy people. I quit moaning about the conditions when I realised that the guys doing the deca-ironman were just down the road. Leaning towards breaking my plan to just build mileage over the summer and not do another marathon until I average 70+ as it seems I need a more concrete goal.
Feeling so crazy I may run again later
Bristol tri (sprint but with a 750m OW swim) is my debut in 3 weeks time. Just aiming to complete it and learn from the inevitable newbie mistakes.
Bristol Half is a build-up race. I'd like to run a decent time, but I'm not expecting a PB. After the New Forest race, I then have 3 weeks to prepare for the Cabbage Patch 10, where I'd like to break the hour.
Quite happy not to be starting an 18 week marathon build up this week. I think I've got a bit of burn-out from 5 years of it - and it seems like quite a few of the fred regulars are in a similar boat.
No news from HR recently - hope he's OK.
edit: Just checked my bank account online and I was debited £46 on 9th June for 2 tickets for a session either of athletics, cycling, swimming or more probably white water canoeing. Not sure whether I'm happy or not about that as it removes me from the next phase.
MtR - don't do an 18 week marathon build up is the answer - make it 10-12 weeks seems to be the way forward
. I'm not starting proper like really until after i try and sort my 10km and 1/2 marathon times out in July. well that's the hopefully plan. But sounds like you have a lot of other good races and targets planned now anyway. last time we heard from HR was around when i was taking the p*ss a bit, hope he wasn't offended - i was only joking, although he also said he was going to be v busy.
i know what u mean about just getting one session of tickets to the Olympics and counting you out of that next phase. If the next phase allows those who got ZERO tickets first dibs at getting ONE session - then fair enough, and then open it to all (who applied)... but if it means they get first dibs and can buy 5-6 session before we get a go - then that is unfair again.
Clearly - i know. it is always in the back of my mind though. And any prolonged "fast" session seems to flare it a little bit, and i know 2 week snowboarding trips are out until i get it properly sorted.
Gobi – I’m not so jealous if it was 30mins of leg burn on a gym bike. There was some 80 rpm quad burn going on at this end today on the back road to Chichester (and back).
MtR – 8 bike laps would be boring, but you’ll know where you’re going after a couple, and you can monitor your bike speed easily. The Bristol Tri sounds ideal as it has an OW swim and the Bristol ½ will give you a fitness pointer too.
I need to find some summer races, I still have some rib damage to manage first though. I think I bruised (or worse) the front of my left hand side, and damaged something muscle wise on the rear of my left hand side. The muscle damage now hurts more than the bruised bit so I must be mending.
Agree that you guys who have done marathon races this year do not need an 18 week schedule.
For Snowdon(October 29th) my proper schedule starts around August 14th(officially starts on 1st August but have written off 2 weeks to just getting a feel for higher mileage). Gives me 8 weeks of training and a proper taper !!!! Given I have been sat at around 40-50 miles a week these last 2 months and the 3 months before that I was doing 60-80 I don't feel I will get any value going long any sooner than late August.
Still seems strange to be thinking about training for "just a marathon"
18 weeks can be fine though if you use the first 3 or 4 as more of a base period. This can take away a bit of the mental challenge as you don't feel like you are proper marathon training, you are just banking some good consistent miles with nothing too fancy.
TR - was good to run a few miles with you too. Seeing you in person, I was actually surprised at how big and lumoxy and muscly you weren't! In a good way of course
. I just thought you were a lot taller and had a much bigger build than me but we were similar height at least. So you've got no excuses to not bag a 2:45 really
. Anyway, it's your comments like "none of us will ever go to the olympics" that keep me running really, as I just want to prove you wrong
. Joking aside, hope the ribs clear up.
selbs - welcome back - was it you who asked if HR's book was going to have an anonymous author? Made me laugh, whoever it was. I doubt any was taken, I'll bet he's back very soon bouncing through the thread in traditional fashion.
Fantastic 5k, marders. And well done at half-mara or thereabouts FR, Keir, Clearly, Mr. B (welcome back too).
It's not always easy to come on here and post that training's going OK, you gave a 10k the full beans, and registered a 38:59. But there you go, I've done it anyway. That's about 70s outside PB, which I'm sure I can be getting back to - but as for making big strides beyond it? I have no idea. I need to stop thinking that I might have plateaued, I don't imagine that's helping me.
might have been i can neither confirm nor deny... nice 10km and to hear training is going OK to PtB.
I am benefiting from a consistent block of training i think, just did the "Hadd" fitness test i do now and then on the treadmill, and it was the best one i have done since August last year which was when i set my 10km and marathon PB's in midst of Abingdon training. So it's a good place to be heading into new PB attempts in July and nearing the start of a marathon campaign! just hope it continues and nothing breaks.....but as always - the races will really tell me where i am at, the old treadmill tests are a bit of a rough guide though.
I read the next stage for Olympic tickets is first come first served and there are about 1 million tickets. All the low end tickets are gone too. I'm hoping that the Mrs can apply even though she didn't put in an application originally but it doesn't sound like it, though technically, she was unsuccessful in the first round!
Anyway, if you're familiar with getting tickets to a big event, like Take That for example (which is why I was in Manchester, shame on me
), you'll know how it's going to work.
8:50am on the day they go on sale you go to the website and login and get ready for the 9am release. Site works great and is fast. Navigate to the page where the BUY button will come up at 9am and sit there pressing refresh until it's live. 8:55, 8:56, 8:57, site still ok. 8:58, screen hangs. Ok, so 10 million other people have the same idea, who'd have thunk that! Quickly open shed loads more browsers and go to the page (if you can get that far). Shed loads more browsers hang. Waiting, waiting, timeouts start coming back, error messages, site busy, blah blah...
To the far right of all your tabs you notice a page has stopped loading and looks to be at the next stage. You may be lucky. You now have to make a very important decision. Which event, which price category, and how many seats. The wrong choice and the search will come back with no tickets available, please try again. You basically get once chance. Go in with a low price and you'll have a small chance of being successful. Go in with the highest price and you should be ok. You decide to go somewhere in the middle as you don't really want to pay £100 per hour to watch some heats. You put in your request and off it goes again. It's 9:08am.
Whilst that tab thinks about it you go back and sort all your other tabs out, refreshing and no doubt cursing Lord Coe. Back to your ticket request tab and it's come back, NO TICKETS AVAILABLE, damn, why was I so cheap with the £75 tickets. It's now 9:11am and you spend the next 30 minutes refreshing, getting part way through sometimes but the site is running like a dog with no legs. You can see from the live search results on google that no one is having any luck and you are resigning yourself to missing out once again.
A small glimmer of light appears as one of your tabs is back to the ticket selection screen. This time you go for the top price, thinking that even though you can't afford them, you'll buy double the amount of seats you need, then sell the extra tickets for triple the price you paid, therefore recovering all the money for your tickets + 50%, which may just about cover a beer and a burger at the event. You search again knowing it's your last chance.
It's 9:37am. 9:38am. 9:39am. It's back and has found some tickets! £200 a seat with an £8 transaction charge per ticket + an £8 delivery fee, BARGAIN, BUY! You are taken to the payment screen where you start to enter your credit card details only to find that you have to pay by VISA, stupid Mastercard. No problemo Batman, I'll use my debit card. SHIT, it's only got £500 on it. FFFFUUUUUUUUUDDDDDDDGGGGGGEEEE. You have 1 minute and 33 seconds to enter the details before your request times out...Luckily, your significant other doesn't spend as much money as you and they kindly let you use their card. 1 minute left, hurry. You enter them just in time to take you to the next stage. It's 9:46am. Waiting, waiting....
Finally you are presented with a confirmation screen and you are one of the few to have secured a ticket to the greatest spectacle on earth! Congratulations. It's 9:51am, you are tired, your eyes hurt, your head hurts, your fingers hurt, you just wish they could hurt some more to take away the serious hurt that has just been placed on your (significant other's!) bank balance. But it's all been worth it. You have front row seats to the Archery semi finals.
"Hard as Nails Antipodean Distance Runner Spotted at Take That Concert - All Credibility Lost" - would be the headline if the public cared about distance running in any shape or form...
Injury for me - been out for nearly 2 weeks but managed a 30 second hobble yesterday without pain - though still some when walking most the time. Going to be tough but hopefully back running soonish with an Amsterdam build-up to begin...
Not long back from a sunny 5.5 miles that were run at 6.xx !!!
http://www.anzrankings.org.nz/
Still massively impressed with your weekends work though, so it's a 14.19 from me, glass half full and all that.
For those injured here is a link to help you kill off your time on the bench. Not certain it wont kill off your fingers and give you RSI, but at least what I've seen of it the game provides a nice flat marathon course, and conditions that don't seem too hot or windy. Click anywhere on the screen to "insert a coin". Right and left arrows move the legs.
http://www.e4.com/game/janey-thomson-s-marathon/play.e4
I dropped out at the end of mile one in 7.42. Not mentally strong enough to go any further I'm afraid, but I'll work on my endurance over the summer.
Dull
Years of doing this for Glastonbury tickets have got me hardened to the process. Additional steps to consider (which might work):
1. Set up a virtual group of 3-4 people who want tickets on separate machines.
2. Exchange all your debt/credit card numbers and personal details.
3. Open up an IM chat so you update each other on (lack of) progress
4. When you get in, share the URL in case there's a gateway page throttling the numbers who can get in.
5. First one in buys tickets then tries to use the back button to buy tickets for others.
Clearly step 2 requires a high level of trust, and there is a risk of you all buying too many tickets on different cards. But using this method, we've always managed to get all the tickets we've needed.
However this method is for Seetickets. As I recall, Olympics are using Ticketmaster, which works a bit differently, eg. reserving tcikets and giving you a few minutes to put in credit card numbers.
Still appalled by you going to see Take That - but I suppose you were young and impressionable when they were big.
I on the other hand (as an old fart) will be in Finsbury Park this Saturday for Bob Dylan and Christy Moore as a warm-up for Glastonbury.
PtB: I know the feeling. Well done on a) racing when you know you're not in PB shape and b) posting here to tell us!
Marders – With no excess baggage I’m slimmer than most folks expect (30” waist at just over 12 stone). I hope to race a few miles on that Chichester course next Weds with a lap of the motor racing cct thrown in (and no stopping in the pits for new tyres) too. 2:45 is off the wish list now, I’ll be 45 next time and I’m not prepared to go the extra mile (or thirty per week) that it’d take, CRAB will have to carry your flag for you again when you need a drink. As long as I bag a sub 2:52 one day…….
PtB – I’m with MtR. Don’t beat yourself up about it, keep the consistency and it will all drop into place.
HH – sorry to hear that
I should get another chance to buy tickets, but I’m defo not spending big money so a family of 4 can watch a morning of heats/semi’s at the running track, its not supposed to be like that !