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Moraghan Training - Stevie G
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This guy? The Italia top made a comeback at Watford Half. Definitely did not lead from the gun.
Considering how cold it was in Watford, he was dressed appropriately. The others look frozen daft already.
🙂
I love how I can have a few days away from this thread, and upon return will always be impressed by the completely non-sequitur topic lurching.
AG; was it the biscuits or the bakewell that caused the dental damage?
I can confirm that Helsinki and Copenhagen training environments look exactly the same. Mainly white outside, with a beige wall infront of the treadmill inside. I ran in a wife-beater purchased from the US. It would probably have been cooler in a proper running vest, and if the hotel gym air con wasn't set at about 23degC.
That was a "Fresh" run. Snowing a little when I started, increasing to "getting in eyes" mode, and all with the backdrop of tight hips. Hamstring/glutes were fairly behaving apart from a few slight twinges here and there.
7.01 pace, and pretty comfy, but can't say I'd fancy anything like these conditions Sunday. Although it'd make it less of a race and more of an experience!
No run til saturday now, so will rest up, stretch a lot, and see how things lie Sunday. Of course Dean and Bus, back a page you are right, although Bus, the actual risk is to ruin something and not be able to run let alone race, that'd be the disaster, the racing is just the cherry on top these days.
Hoping they can sort my car tomorrow, I have a fairly well planned run/work programme, so adding time in to walk or take buses isn't something i want to be too long lasting! Also, so glad it went wrong sat in the work car park, rather than in Manchester or somewhere!
Nothing wrong with taking the bus SG! Anyway - you need more cherries in your diet
Beginning to wish I hadn't raced Sunday - legs are still feeling it! On top of that, my bloody silly toe has started hurting again after 4 days of being pain free - very odd. Hopefully the old RDM will see it all right!
Weird running this week, thanks to the weather/taper combo!
Mon - no run, 2 x 20min bike
Tue - 2 x 5.5M off-road
Wed - no run. 40 min walk, 2x 20min bike
Thu - 2 x 5.5M off-road
Fri - rest
Sat - 3 miles, with strides, hopefully in race shoes!
Sun - RACE
Also a bit of a shoe issue - last time I raced in my Adios was Maidenhead, and they gave me blisters. Not sure how Hagios would cope with a half, which leaves my Inov-8 road extreme 208s, which seem good, but I've not run more than 8 miles in them so could be risky!
That race Sunday was surprisingly taxing. My lack of racing/few aches seemed to explain it for me, but i think a lot found it like that. Seems odd as there are some way harder sections in other races. Looking down the results there are a lot of known faces that have seen much faster days. I guess that's the challenge once hitting pb mountain drifts, staying around your top level.
I remember Ric once bailing on Wokingham, and I can see his reasoning to a tee now. Shuffling out a long distance in bad conditions might be great for sheer mental strength, but maybe not a lot else! We'll see though, next run is saturday, and that's a long time in running.
Iron, it was a cumulative effect of eating sugary food every day, problem is I still need to pay for root canal and a crown. Need to get a job now to pay for it!
Thought I'd go to the lookout for a 6-8 miler but decided on the way to detour and run from Wargrave down to the Thames by Hurley and back, a route I'd never done before. Thanks to a miscalculation and a wrong turn it became a hilly, muddy 10.7 miles. I am now smashing out the 8 mm runs!
I was going to have a light week for Wokingham, but now I've done 27 miles already this week, I reckon I'll just carry on and see what's in the legs on Sunday. If nothing else it will be good weeks training for Reading. The good thing about having a soft PB, is that there's still potential value in the race for me. I hope it's soft anyway, it might be that I am just rubbish at longer distances. We shall see.
Looks like it will be about 4c at the start rising to 6c come the finish, cloudy with reasonably light wind. What you'd expect in Feb.
You need Obamacare AG!
Good luck all for the Wokey Cokey.
I shall be assisting at Woodley Jnr parkrun and will run back so will probably cross the Wokey course at some point.
Unfortunately I'm pulling the plug on Wokingham too. The plan was to have a good solid week of marathon training last week and taper down this but instead last week crashed with sickness and being bed bound.
Piecing together some good runs this week but HR is constantly through the roof on every run, showing im just not recovered yet. The plan at Woky was to go balls out as i havent raced since June last year and see exactly where i'm at. Defeats the purpose if I'm not race fit.
shame as it's going be a good thread outing.
IC: non-sequitur! Illegitimi non carborundum indeed.
12 km at lunchtime. I am switching to km for a few days as I need to pace parkrun on Saturday for 21 minutes, so 4:12 per km on the nose, and then do a half on Sunday and try km as a dry run for the marathon. 4:30 for 42.195 km gives 3:09:53 so as the course is 5km laps it is much easier to work in km and the maths at 4:30 per km is trivial.
The parkrun pacing is a bit odd: I normally pace a group but this is pacing to a pace so running at 4:13 each km and not really interacting with the runners: just being a mobile time marker. The idea is that runners set off and then maybe pick up a pacer or chase the pacer ahead etc.
Shame Johnas - bad luck with being ill. Half expecting it myself after finding my Cornish pasty at lunch was still frozen in the middle! I took it back to Cooray and accused him of trying to poison me so he could have my Wokingham number
Not what you expect from Wokingham though - usually pisses it down with a strong headwind
Spot on SG - can't work out why that race was so punishing! Wasn't a particularly big week either.
Yes Weather looking fresh for the xc at the weekend! Shame about Wokingham Jonas! I had to do the same with Watford 1/2 a few years ago - god knows how much money I have wasted on races I haven't done!
Been out to Regents park - planning to do 8 x 1k on the this horrible slightly down and then slighty up wide path. Omly managed 6 painful reps (the wind in my face for the uphill bit) before the stomach curtailed proceedings - although did another 3 min burst back to the office. Trainers felt unresponsive - although that could be my legs. Why are trainers so squishy these days?
Got the Lytchett 10 Sunday week - might have to go back to the old worn out Adidas Tempo's...
bad news Johnas and Bus (as a devon born lad there are few things worse than a badly made pasty)
think i have a 200m rep session tonight. be good to blast a couple but if its too windy / cold might have to keep my sensible head on and be consistant and keep the times sensible. i still have a few inchs of snow in my garden so who knows what sort of condition the track is in.
just on the theme of pulling out of races, how many do people think they've pulled out of over the years and what total of entry fee?
Thinking back, I can remember missing Wokingham years back due to illness, and Gosport a few years back when I locked my back out the day before. Probably £40 worth in those two.
I've also quite dumbarsely missed 2 races I've actually driven to! The Datchet XC in about 2009, where I got to the venue of the 5k round the corner, but didn't have anyone around who could direct me to the XC start! Also on my birthday one year, I got to where the Didcot 5miler was meant to be starting, but couldn't find any sign of the race, so ended up pootling a 5miler round some council estates! Great birthday!
On the other side, I've done a small handful of races I shouldn't have done. Fever at a 10k at Headington, and cold/chest infections at a few XCs and Gosport half once!
One time I entered the Keyworth Turkey Trot and then couldn't run due to illness it so sold my entry to someone at work's husband. Is that the kind of thing you were thinking of?
as long as no race organisers read that slightly dubious behaviour, erm then yes!
Just realised I'd missed off my hard luck stories with missing Marlow races. At least 3 down to various niggles/aches, but only 1 was entered beforehand.
An ex work colleague posted that London is now 79days away. I did fear for him a little, as he's a large chap who doesn't do much exercise, and the longest run he's done to date is 12miles. However, I'm slightly more relieved that he does have a couple of 20milers in his plan.
Races I've paid entry for and not raced due to illness: 0.Races I've paid entry for and not raced due to work getting in the way: 1.
Total loss: £2. It was LFOTM so not an expensive race.
I have also only had one day off work due to illness in the last 20 years so running is just in line with general health levels. I have had spells off running due to injury but luckily I tend not to enter too far ahead so don't get a build up of entries I can't use.
When I put my money down to enter a race I'm not making a commitment to run that race, I'm buying an option to do that race.
That means I have the choice to race if I fancy it, or not. At Wokingham; due to shit freezing weather, it was a not. I don't have to run a race simply because I've paid for it.
For many runners, its the goody bag and peripheral benefits that they want from a race; they just have to get around to get it. For others, they would rather risk death than not get their moneys worth. You'll know the sort, they'll finish a race having 'shat' themselves.
🙂
Agree with that Ric.
Wokingham was definitely a case of "get on the waiting list in case you're well up for it in 4months time". Now it's a few days away it's a case of "heck, time has gone quickly"
The days where I could guarantee I'd be able to enter 20+ races, the vast majority someone else had picked, and often at 3-4weeks notice and race them flat out between Jan - Dec are certainly gone. Looking back it makes the 3-4 years I managed to win the old club's championship remarkable on just pure attendance, as if you missed a race or 2 you could miss out on it all. (Due to a ludicrous over importance on attendance versus positions).
Phil, that's an incredible record, but then you are a suit, so I expect you have to be in.
My 12 year work record isn't bad at all for actual normal sick days, would be a mere handful. But then it's massively padded out with about 8-10 days off with chicken pox, a week for snapped ankle ligaments, and 1 week off with a locked back!
When you tally that lot in, it's no better really than Joe Sixpack who takes zero care of his fitness!
I still remember the shock of that ankle ligament snap. Didn't really hurt (when in later years I saw a much tougher guy than me do the same, and be screaming in pain), just went very stiff. I was sat on the touchline, ankle now 3 times bigger than normal, saying to my footy manager "I might be a doubt for next week", after he'd thrown some water on it.
Yeah that'll help mate!
That's a good way of looking at it Ric - I'm afraid I fall in the "money's worth" category!
As far as I can remember I missed Cabbage Patch last year due to injury, Andy Reading a couple of years back due to sickness, decided not to run Ridgeway Run the week before Abo and DNF'd at Marlow 5 after 2M due to a hip injury. I'm sure there is at least one more injury one, but can't remember what!
It was allowed! I wouldn't have been letting Jacqui from work's husband run a crap time under my name!
Oh, and I agree with Ric - if you've already paid and you're not getting your money back whether you run it or not, then you're no worse off financially if you don't do it.
I've pulled out of a few; M'head HM, Marlow HM & Shinfield 10k.
When I did the London Marathon 2005 I should have pulled out. I had a severe hamstring tear in October, I didn't run until 2 weeks before the Marathon. Needless to say it wasn't a pretty race, however I finished and don't regret it. After two weeks, I was able to walk pain free
To the best of my immediate memory, I've twice run races I should have shelved. They were both the last race in a league where overall I was leading.
I achieved the objective; but knew before I had even finished, that when I stopped, it was going to be painful walking, let alone running.
Now days I'm happy to drop an entire race series for the sake of common sense. That approach also gains approval from all the non running associates that I have.
Simply by establishing some common ground between us. i.e not running when ill and injured, it's close to what they would do if by chance they actually ran at all.
🙂
Sometimes I race when less than 100% just to get one in. Our club champs is the best 7 from 14 with the first home getting 100 points, second 98 etc. The maths works out that if you can get in the top 6 (so score 90 or more) then over 7 races you score more than 630 and that is enough to get into contention for a top 5 slot. If you have run 6 races, then you can't exceed 600 points so are out of contention. At Sandhurst XC this year I had a mare, but by finishing I get 78 points which may well not count at the end of the season, but also may come in useful if I have raced 6 good races and need a 7th. Seeing how as I definitely won't run Fleet Half (week after the marathon) and Maidenhead Half (£24 just hurts too much especially as it is going to a private company and not an AC) and didn't do Cliveden, I am down to choosing from 11.
Not as bad as SG talks about with the winner coming from the last standing, but certainly worth while getting one in at 80% or 90% fit.
Also I think it doesn't hurt to race regularly. You get good at racing by racing. You can train as much as you like but you do need match fitness as footballers say.
Maidenhead is £24 these days? Do Maidenhead AC not put it on? Did that change recently?
Need to do a sub 60 there one day, have a couple of low to mid 57s elsewhere and a few sub 60s within halves so should be imminently doable, just need to get back there in one piece and at a decent age!
Ric, agree with dropping series you don't fancy for whatever reason, but the problem is that you can just find half a year flies by. I just didn't fancy XC this year, until the last race, when i fancied it for about 1/4mile!
Hoping the car is fixed today, had a 2mile walk after. Is hard to put my finger on it, as there's no pain or too much discomfort from anything, but just have this vague sense of an unusual pelvis/hip weak feeling.
However, a glorious F OFF today
Maidenhead Half is purple patch in September and is £24 and Maidenhead Easter 10 is Maidenhead AC and is £18. I just have a bee in my bonnet about people such as purple patch. Their events are consistently more expensive than comparative AC run events and the ACs tend to make big charity donations. I don't mind if people want to make a living out of running (and there are a lot of people who do so openly) but to me they sit uncomfortably between the commercial and the amateur.
I feel pretty good about Purple Patch, because I won one of their races once (in fact I hold the course record), and I got to break the tape and stand on an actual podium. Worth £15 or whatever it cost. I just wish the photos of me on the podium actually included some of the spectators as opposed to a massive empty field in the background, as it looks a little odd.
Races missed with injury - Cabbage Patch 10 in 2012, Maidenhead Half in 2013 and Last Friday of the Month at some point (I think), Don't think there are any more that I'd already entered. A few I shouldn't have run due to illness, notably the Frome Half Marathon in 2013, where I walked four times (still came 3rd though). I'm never fussed about the cost, I just love racing, and it feels rotten to miss out.
I also don't mind Purple Patch as I turned up to one of their races, and realised I didn't have enough money to enter, but they let me enter anyway, even though I was a couple of quid short
. Also set a PB.
Dropping out of Triathlons is altogether different, the standard distances are circa £100 and my Ironman was about £400 I think. I wouldn't have been too philosophical about pulling out of that one!
Re. non-AC races, I've been involved in organising a race with a club and it was quite cheap, but that was largely because of all the free stuff we were able to get - borrow John's van, not pay rent on the clubhouse that we'd borrowed off the local football club, borrow trestle tables from a local school, get local medic pals of one of the club members to do the first aid for free, etc., plus no medals, goody bags, no road closures needed etc. I can imagine how even the necessary expenses (toilets, shelter) could add up if you didn't have all that goodwill to fall back on.
Having just got a £850 bill for the car, Instrument cluster needing replacing apparently, I'm even more relaxed about the prospect of sacking off sunday's £18 fee now! Shocker as it only has 18,000 miles on it.
Phil, fair enough, didn't think i'd missed the 10miler being moved from the AC!