Moraghan Training - Stevie G

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  • Dachs said:
    Well, I've put in a stretch target PMJ, but even that is likely to see me in one of the earlier races.
    Guess I'll have to come early and drink more beers. Anyone got a pad near Parliament Hill?
  • Yeah bloody masters relays are on the same day now! So can't run, but hoping to make a mad dash down to watch. 

    Nice session tonight at rugger club. Was offered the 5 x 2k with Kimpton but we agreed 5 x 1600 would be a better. Think the recoveries were about 2 mins to 2 mins 30. Came out as 5.19, 5.14, 5.12, 5.11, 5.04. 100m of slope on each lap, 2 laps on each rep. 

  • The BusThe Bus ✭✭✭
    600 feet of climb per 1600m Simon? That's 3x more than the FRA categorisation for fell races :smile: Presumably that's length rather than height?
    Insanely quick reps though, either way!!!
  • Cheers Bus, yes just length of slope! So I only had half the slope, IK got the full monty, didn't stop him averaging 6.02 for his 2k's. THATS insanely fast ;-)
  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2017
    Random one, but had a message that FB messenger is now no longer supported on my phone. Check your phones guys, and confirm that this is just because im rocking an old Windows phone that has about 0.05% of the market share!
  • Reg WandReg Wand ✭✭✭
    Just to confirm then, FB messenger is shite on all phones.
  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭
    i thought it was fairly decent, but this way round, where you get a brief notification pop up, but can't get in to read the message was ridiculous.

    However, a Datchet team mate (is there anything this gang can't do) gave me some advice, so now ive set it the messenging as a pop out browser, and it's a great workaround, to stop me shelling out some samolians on a new fone :)

    Running? 10miler, at 6.53 today.

    Felt a little weary, so am glad there's nothing before Friday's turnout. Looking forward to it, 4 days off work, tidy little break.
  • RicFRicF ✭✭✭
    Ref Dachs feeling illness coming on. 
    If it's a sore throat grotty feeling, check the wind direction. If it's from the east, it's the poor air quality coming from the continent.
    In the UK we generally get the fresh stuff off the Atlantic.
     When I'm in New Zealand, the air is as clean as anything. First time I was there, I discovered I could take a nice deep breath. Still can. No crap in the air.
     As for actual training. This morning I set off for a five miler with the intention of not straining myself. A first mile of 8:54 indicated I wasn't exactly flying. No matter, I'll just maintain the easy effort. Second mile of 8:05. Oh! looks like it might be one of those. Third mile went 7:17. Ok.
    Fourth mile into the wind 6:57 and now that I appeared to have warmed up, a fifth mile of 6:27.
    Last bit  after that I gave a bit of a dig to my house and went mid fives. 
    Average pace 7:30 min miles, without going anywhere near that pace!


    🙂

  • The BusThe Bus ✭✭✭

    I'd agree with that Simon! Nice progression Ric, and good 10 SG.

    SG - there's a major accident on the M40 at Loudwater, Westbound so London Rd is VERY busy. Not sure when you are heading home, but its not expected to reopen until 7. same for you Philip if you're reading!

    7 miles of me today. Didn't feel like speedwork, so went for a run along the canal. Changed my mind on the return leg and threw in 10x short sprints of between 20 -30 seconds each, with about 0.15M steady run in between. Interesting session - has left my calf a bit sore, but hopefully only a temporary thing.

  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭
    Ta bus. Didn't see your message but was tipped off. Still took over an hour on another route!
  • The BusThe Bus ✭✭✭
    Not good - two dead apparently.
  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭

    Sounds a horrific incident, makes you realise how easily a smash can happen.

    Am certain future generations will be amazed we ever let fallible man control such a dangerous machine at such speeds.

    Makes my pathetic impatience at PO10 still not finalising the relay results and this onto people's pages look just that!

  • The BusThe Bus ✭✭✭
    Yep - we're still happy to look at 2500 people a year dying on the roads and say "well that's inevitable" and the 20,000+ premature deaths from traffic related air pollution as a small price to pay for personal travel freedom...
  • ML84ML84 ✭✭✭
    Nice progression Ric.

    i did look for you in the results Dean and wondered why you wasn't there. That must've been a right panic sorting out someone to do your leg. Hopefully nothing too serious as you were going well.

    nice reps SC. Is IK doing London this year? 

    I toyed with the idea of doing Highgate but I've not run sub 32.30 so can't enter before a certain date I think and that's only if it hasn't filled up before its opened to the masses. There's a fell relay the club targets the day after so hopefully there's a northern 10000 later in the year I can have a bash at. 

    The southern relay venue looks pretty good for racing on the video. Looks like my club aren't going to the nationals either after quite a few drop outs which is a shame. I'd agreed to run but there's another 3 lads doing the marathon the week before, one injured, another lad in for blood tests the day before and another couple are away. :-( 

    Tried carb depleting again but only managed the best part of 3 days. Probably a placebo effect but stops me feeling about 20 stone but it doesn't half make running a struggle. 2 easy/2 mp and 2 easy last night. Wore my HR monitor to gauge and the 2 mp into the wind came out at 5.53 despite the lack of carbs and wind. 26 @ that pace didn't feel doable but i'll be trusting the taper. Plan is to go off @5.50/6s and hopefully feel good enough to pick it up and not fall apart. 
  • Stevie G said:

    Makes my pathetic impatience at PO10 still not finalising the relay results and this onto people's pages look just that!

    I see the relays are on powerof10 but it is a shambles as they have the leg lengths wrong (long leg is 4.5 miles but really was 4) so SG scores 85% WAVA and the guy who won the first leg gets a cool 98.18%.
  • DachsDachs ✭✭✭
    edited March 2017
    Matt - As you've run sub 33 you can enter Highgate right now.
  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭
    will be interesting to see what they actually class the long leg as in the end.
    I'd heard 4miles, but a lot of us got 4.08, but of course garmin variance/non racing line are the usual suspects.
     
    if it was a straight 4miles that give my 22.26 a 5.36/5.37 mile pacing, which i'll take, as even my best 5k in the last 6months was 17.20 - 5.35, and at times it felt like i was crawling into the wind at a pace no-one had ever run slower than.

    Rest day today, woke up feeling hot and knackered, and have a slight tight rib area again. Hopefully just a residual shock at a proper racing effort again and not a recap on the 18month saga that started with this sort of thing!

    Matt - shame another qualifier not going. That 75 qualifying men's teams will be down to about 60 or so before we even get there! Helps our chances of top 50 though :)
  • Stevie G said:
    will be interesting to see what they actually class the long leg as in the end.
    I'd heard 4miles, but a lot of us got 4.08, but of course garmin variance/non racing line are the usual suspects.
     
    frickin runbritain reckons it was an easy course and gives the short leg a score of -2.2. I paced parkrun on 7 January in 19:58 and scored that +3.2 so rates that higher.
  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2017
    I wonder what it would be like without any wind. Still 3 little climbs a lap, however glorious the opening stretch is. In my naivety i turned up expecting it'd be completely flat as a pancake. I'll turn up to the nationals expecting the Marlow half.

    Did they give the 3 lapper a different difficulty level?  At least with 2 laps, you have an easier mental strategy. It wasn't hard to think, "heck, i have to do this stretch twice more" on the first lap awkward parts

    Had a quick look through the results again, and perception is a funny thing.
    I'd thought thank goodness i wasn't leg 1, you'd get seriously exposed. Seeing a guy who'd beaten me at a parkrun a while back sitting 4th last a few hundred metres in added to that feeling.

    However, i completely forgot i was ill that day, added to the fact this guy was clearly not full beans (finishing in 6min miling).
    If we go just on the results i'd have beaten 19 on that leg. While you can't necessarily go off times when conditions differe leg to leg, you also get the most like a proper race on leg 1, so would that have improved the time, or would it have encouraged an even sillier start? (hard to believe with a 5.05 first mile!). I think the mix of women, and being able to overtake people helps more in fairness, as it adds to a feeling that you're going well.

    Beat 22 on my leg and numbers had dropped a little by then. 
    24th out of 46 on the leg , a midpacker :)

    Also noticed  V70 on one long leg! Wowzers.
  • Stevie G said:

    Did they give the 3 lapper a different difficulty level?  At least with 2 laps, you have an easier mental strategy. It wasn't hard to think, "heck, i have to do this stretch twice more" on the first lap awkward parts

    3 lapper is listed as -2.5, so even easier than the 2 lapper. Mind you, if you have not raced for ages it still scores in your top 5. 
  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭
    How on earth do they equate extra distance as an easier experience? That's madness even by RB standards.

    I never look on there, only ever PO10. If a link goes to RB i'm always a bit gutted.
  • DachsDachs ✭✭✭

    SG, no-one from RB has marked a course as easy or hard, it is a number that has been generated automatically based on how people performed on it as compared to what would be expected based on their handicap.  If they've entered it as 7.2 kilometres, which they seem to have done, then that is 4.47 miles.  If what you're saying is right, and it was actually 4.08 miles (or thereabouts), it's no wonder the RB formula comes out with it being an easy course.

    Either way, it doesn't matter a great deal, because all the calculation is ultimately doing is benchmarking your performance against that of the other runners, taking their handicap into account going into the race.

    Where RB's flaw really kicks in is when it weights performances as being the same value irrespective of the importance of the race.  So you can be pretty sure that at the Southern Relays virtually everyone is giving it full beans, making the calculation present it as an 'easier' course.  Whereas, in a parkrun, you are going to get a lot of people running below their 'level', whether it be people doing it as a training run, having a fun jog round the park, pacing others such as PMJ, or the weekly parkrun merchants who simply cannot realistically always perform at their best.  Looking at the results without context (as RB does) therefore makes it look 'difficult'.  In this sense, PMJ has contributed to his parkrun being rated harder, by running it below his ability.

    For this reason, I personally don't think that parkruns should count towards the handicap.

    The other issue you might have with the relays is runners who have been out for some time or who race infrequently, and whose handicap has artificially dropped below their real level, turning out for their club and running above what RB thinks they should be capable of.  Like SG just did.

  • To summarise what Dachs says, RB is crap. 

    What it tries to do is pretty clever but inherently flawed. Say you have a cohort of 101 runners, so me and 100 others. Assume the 10 others are running robots who never have a bad run and just perform to the best of their ability each and every time they run. One week this cohort does a flat 10k on the road and the robots all run 36 minutes dead and I run 40. The next week it is a cross country 10k, and the robots all run  40 and I run 41. The algorithm looks at the two runs and reckons the second is harder than the first and correctly judges my performance to be relatively better.

    The flaw is that the cohort does not have 100 running robots in it. As Dachs says, the algorithm has no clue how people have targetted the run, so I have done parkruns on a Saturday when there is a big race on Sunday and a lot of runners jog round and so it appears to be harder. Same on New Year's day, a lot of people did parkrun doubles so on average everyone went a bit slower so the odd sod who did a single gets a higher handicap. 

    Where Dachs is wrong ( I think) is that the runs are weighted by distance so it discounts run after a period of time and that time is proportional to the run distance, so do a good marathon and it stays in your top5 for the best part of a year, a good 5k goes quickly. If you run regularly, this flushes out the parkruns. 
  • Track at lunchtime today. Odd weather: Tuesday was bright and hot as was today, yesterday was long top, hat and gloves. Plan was 2 miles jog out, 6x400m with 400m jog recovery. I recorded my laps but did not look at the watch during the lap so were run to feel with a goal at the back of my mind of doing sub-90 laps. Came out with 91, 91, 87, 85, 88, 85 (all rounded down for ease of reporting), and an average of 88.5.  Quite pleased with that as an early season marker.
  • 3 hills per lap SG? Can only remember two proper hills, the whole of the bit round the back is basically a bit of a drag all the way up. I think it's a decent venue, just been windy the last two times. 

    ML84 - yes IK is on the elite list this year, seems to be going well enough at the moment! Lovely day off today, pint before I pick the kid up from school in the village pub. With the LFOTM tomorrow I don't even have to go for a run. Happy days!!
  • DachsDachs ✭✭✭
    edited March 2017

    Ah, I wasn't aware of that element of it PMJ.  You could well be right.  My marathons never feature in my top 5, so I never notice them hanging around longer.

    Personally, I like RunBritain, but you just have to be aware of its flaws.

    Did 10 x 800 on the track last night.  Didn't bother timing them, as I couldn't be bothered with worrying about the tyranny of the stopwatch.  Was undecided whether to do it, as my inner thigh had been giving me considerable grief all day.  As soon as I started running fast, it magically disappeared, and is virtually gone today.  The body is a weird thing.

  • DachsDachs ✭✭✭
    3 hills per lap SG? Can only remember two proper hills, the whole of the bit round the back is basically a bit of a drag all the way up. I think it's a decent venue, just been windy the last two times. 

    ML84 - yes IK is on the elite list this year, seems to be going well enough at the moment! Lovely day off today, pint before I pick the kid up from school in the village pub. With the LFOTM tomorrow I don't even have to go for a run. Happy days!!
    Why does your kid go to school in the village pub?

  • alehousealehouse ✭✭✭
    And talking of LFoM and pubs, I tend to go to with a few others to The Nags Head, 53 Kinnerton St, Belgravia, SW1X 8ED. 
    Not been well all week so expectations tomorrow are less than they should be! I know I've not been well as not been to the alehouse since Saturday!  
    Progress is rarely a straight line. There are always bumps in the road, but you can make the choice to keep looking ahead.
  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭
    good first point Dachs. When they record the correct distance (in about 3weeks), we'll all look like heroes with the correct handicap ;)

    Simon, felt like a climb, settling than another climb round that fussy loopy bit to me.

  • Matthew HeadMatthew Head ✭✭✭
    edited March 2017
    Hi guys, I hope it's okay to interject in this thread... I normally hang around on Scott's thread, but I've been reading this one for a short while now, and was hoping to gather some more advice/opinions?

    I've a couple of goals for this year, one of which is to go sub-60 at the Great South Run in October, and the other is to push my 10km time down (although no specific target, but towards 35 would be nice).
    My current PBs are 17:45 parkrun, 28:19 5M, 38:29 track 10000m, 62:54 10M and 1:23:20 HM (here's my Po10 http://powerof10.info/athletes/profile.aspx?athleteid=703182)
    My 5M result (Victory 5, December) is my most greatest achievement - this was at the end of a strong training period following the HM training and adding in extra speedwork. My average weeks were ~50mi, with a 15mi long run, two sessions, a 10mi medium-long run (easy), and two shorter easy runs.

    Unfortunately following Christmas I was torpedoed by a winter virus, which cut the running volume/intensity right down - I've only reached 50mi/week at the beginning of the month (all easy running), running Reading the other week in 1:26:40 off of no speed work. Following this, I ran my first training session of the year this week, 5 x 6mins (3mins) with paces of 6:06 / 6:05 / 6:03 / 5:59 / 5:48, I ran slightly cautiously not knowing what I'd be able to manage, but was sufficiently puffed come the end! (Link to my Strava training log https://www.strava.com/athletes/5902081/training/log)
    It's worth noting that I ran a 36:58 10km during a continuous progression run session in the run up to Victory 5, so I'm hoping I'm not all that far off PB shape.

    I've 10km races lined up on the 23rd April, 4th June; track 10000m on the 21st June; and may enter a 5km on 24th May.

    I'm wondering how you guys would advise progressing from hereon in. I've had some great advice from Scott E, but looking for some more approaches/opinions. 
    I am part of a coached group from back home (Tavistock, Devon) with sessions focussing on the marathoners in the run up to VLM. So I run the sessions solo, currently based in Southampton (and relocating in a few months).


    Many thanks, and I hope it's not a problem asking for advice!
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