My road to Rio

mike - glad the club night was good.   keep with it!

it doesnt make sense does it...run the majority or your weekly miles at easy pace and you get faster ?!?  It is something every new runner makes the mistake and runs all mileage at a faster ave pace.  You need mileage and time on your feet to improve over the long term eg..not 3 secs off here and there.  I started training about a yr ago after running all my mileage same pace on a treadmill.....the difference in my times by slowing down and increasing my mileage on my slow runs and run the club nights on the track fast have seen a decent jump.

oh...and dont worry about the ages, im the youngest in my training group at 39yrs and you might be happy with my 5k time. Old timers can move too!

Yeh im always here. 

Been taking in the advice and running my easy days easy by using the mcmillan running calculator paces, I had a slight injury in my shin (maybe because of the uneveness of the roads i run on and the darkness, I lose my balance time to time ) so I didn't run on Thursday unfortunately, I had 7.5 miles planned so thats ruined my weekly mileage, I decided to do some core exercises for 30mins instead.

Tomorrow will be the parkrun again, hoping for a 18:30 ish, although ive been hoping for that for the past month, I think I have a mental block and can't get past the 18:4x's  

mike rushton wrote (see)

You mean run your easy days easy and run your hard days hard?

Yes.

Glad you've started on the club sessions. Hopefully you've witnessed for yourself one thing - runners that are quicker than you are happy to be doing runs at an easy pace.  Since you mention McMillan, the pace calculator there is absolute gold, except the suggested easy run paces if anything are a little quick.

Keep the faith, your times will begin to come down with consistent training.  It's a marathon - ok, 5k - not a sprint. 

Thanks Phil. 

Forgot to post here about what happened on saturday, here are the results:

 http://www.parkrun.org.uk/Bolton/results/latestresults

Bolton decided to change the route, and make the time spent on the track less and include another hill apparently looking at the times around me in comparison to their pb's, the new route seems to be about 20-30 seconds harder. 

The guy who won it has a pb of 17:10 at a parkrun and he described the route as the hardest parkrun hes ever done, so I think I may be in better shape than what my time suggests, hopefully I am.  

I also scored the 4th highest age grade. 

I think last saturdays 'tempo session' paid off, im now making my training more and more structured and im doing fartleks for the first time tonight, should put me in good stead for saturday.

Hey guys!

Been a while since I posted here, I have a few updates and a couple of questions.

Next saturday on the 27th I will be doing the parkrun and aiming for a sub 18:20 on the challenging Bolton course, I've been keeping my training consistent and im up to 37mpw now, with 2 interval sessions on tuesdays and thursdays at the club. My long run is on Sunday and im up to 11 miles and im keeping it there for several weeks, this includes 1 mile at tempo pace. Every other day is easy and every friday I take the day off.

On wednesday the 7th November I will be representing my college in the north-west colleges cross country champs, top 8 make it into the north west team and they go down to Bath University for 2 days and compete in the nationals, what a chance to impress eh!? Last year I did it and came 20th off no training.

Question: My coach wasn't at training this evening so I didn't have the opportunity to ask him a question, regardless, you lot will do.

Tonight we did 4mins on 2mins off x 4, I did every rep in 1150m or thereabouts. So around 3:27-28 for the k, was wondering if I did them too fast or too slow? so 17:20 pace but my 5k pb is 18:40.

Also how should I taper for my upcoming races, should I not do any hard session withing 4-5 days before the race, should I take a rest the day before, or 2 days before and do some strides the day prior to the race?

Sorry for the questions.  

mike rushton wrote (see)

Tonight we did 4mins on 2mins off x 4, I did every rep in 1150m or thereabouts. So around 3:27-28 for the k, was wondering if I did them too fast or too slow? so 17:20 pace but my 5k pb is 18:40.

Depends very much on whether you believe training should be done at current fitness/very narrowly faster, or smashed as hard as you can.

Im guessing the 'smashed as hard as you can' has the most benefits but carries the most risks?

Yep.

Depends what your coaches philosophy is.

Personally under my coach, who is stil taking me to pbs 10years after my first race, I've never come away from a session feeling smashed, and thus the next day's session is compromised.

In years gone by, I've done a session or 2 that's left me so mashed, I could barely walk for 2 or 3 days after!

IMO if you've managed to run an interval session with fairly even splits, maintaining good running through the line, and feeling like you could've done at least one more rep in the same time without killing yourself, that's probably a better guide than whether you've managed to run it at such-and-such distance race pace.

If you get to the end of a hard but manageable session that you think ought to compare to your 5k pace, to me it makes less sense to say "I ran it too fast, it was x amount of time inside my 5k pace" and a lot more sense to say either "my 5k time needs revising" or just "I can clearly run this session at quicker than my 5k pace".

...of course, this depends slightly on the purpose of the session as well.  Maybe you're training specifically for a target 5k and want to practise holding a target pace. In which case, if the session is too easy you can always progress things next time by either lengthening the rep, increasing the number of reps, or shortening the interval.  I don't think most of my interval sessions go that way in practise though, my aim would normally be to run the whole thing as evenly as possible for a given target level of effort.  I'll look at the pace afterwards as the output, and possibly compare it to race PBs and/or targets out of curiosity.

Came 14th out of 60 or so, top 4 run for England so I had no hope. But not bad considering I was wearing my road running trainers and alsmost everyone else was wearing spikes. Eck, I even lost my trainer in the mud and had to run back to get it, lost a few seconds there.  Remind me to tape my trainers next time.

remind you to buy spikes.they are relatively cheap and will make a hell of a difference

Stevie G- sorry to hijack the post, you mentioned how your coach is still getting you to PB's after 10 years? Am I missing out on something then? My coach has barely had any impact on my training or racing whatsoever so far

Torchie, the last 2 1/2 years of coaching, I've mixed the decent mileage i was doing with a proper structured plan, and from thinking I was at my peak, i now know there's plenty more to come.

What's your scenario? Age, years training etc. Is your coach individual to you, or just a guy at your local running club.

Clearly a guy trying to do a session for 20runners isn't going to be as beneficial as a bespoke one.

I've done some sessions from a "level 2" coach that were fun, but next to useless for improvement

@Stevie G- I'm 17, started running in March 2011 after doing nothing previously except cycling to school everyday since March 2010 (50 miles a week), my dad was a runner so his advice made me progress quickly. I didn't take it seriously or passionately at all until about September last year. I ran 43 mins for 10k in August last year, 41:30 by December and 37:30 by March. I joined my club in January, my coach is just 'the coach' for the endurance group at my club. He lives down my road. He's a sound bloke and gives me advice if I ask for it, but I really think I need more guidance if I want to get to where I want to be. Oh, and at the moment I'm injured (still) so I'm back to square one...