My road to Rio

doesn't sound too friendly of them Mike, but I'm sure they'll be welcoming in the flesh.

Get down there, say you emailed, tell them you're "the" Mike Rushton from RW, and you're off and rocking

mike rushton wrote (see)

Yeh im still around. 

Thanks seren, hopefully your right!

 I've hardly improved this last month, maybe because my training has remained the same, im yet to break 30mpw, but will do this week!

Thanks Stevie, and yeh im starting to think 17:45 is a little too optimistic a target for christmas, but we will see, joining a club this week.

Just a little question on the club thing actually, ive printed their application form off and filled it in but I don't know who to hand it to or where to post it, ive gone on to their 'contact' section of their website and tried emailing them(they dont provide a phone number or address), and have had no email back in 2 days. Do I just go to one of their training sessions, give them the form/money and im sorted? I know thats what I did when i joined a footy club. The club is Bolton United Harriers AC fyi. 

If you can get a telephone number, this usually works better than email. Just give the coach a ring so that he has the heads up that you want to come along.

Any news on the club Mike?

Nope, I planned to go along to there training session last night but was caught up in an 'emergency', so didn't do any running last night apart from the treadmill that morning. Guess I'll have to wait till Tuesday.

andy the deestrider. wrote (see)

J1M that was probably a simple mistake with the treadmill, we all make mistakes occasionaly. Seriously though how is the training going anyway mike? Hope all is well.

Its been slowly progressive, the run tomorrow and my run on Sunday will take me to 31mpw, 2 miles more than last week. 

Im actually doing something different in the parkrun tomorrow, instead of the 5k I will be doing 10k; I'll be doing the course twice. Somewhere around 39mins would be a good time I think. 

J1M wrote (see)

Andy, sorry, I'm only teasing, I don't even think Mike believed he had accomplished a world record as there were a few winky smiley type faces in his post.

I genuinely like to follow MR's progress, I especially like that fact that he has stuck with 5k (so far) and just works to improve at this distance, I wish I had that disciplin and singlemindedness instead of chopping and changing my targets and doing averagely at all of them.

Your right, I don't believe I did a world record either, just curious to post what the treadmill told me and see your reactions, they were hilarious! 

Thanks for following me, I want to try for the Great North Run next year, although I heard spaces are very limited? I wouldn't mind attempting the shorter distances to such as the 400m/800m/mile to see how they compare to my 5k time.

Ok thanks for the advice, i'll stick to the 5k and the occasional 10k for now. 

Today went well though, did better than expected, the first 5k was comfortably hard and I came through in 19:20, I finished it 30 secs before the race started so perfect timing! I don't know the official time of the race but I completed the 10k in 38:20, so 19:00 or thereabouts. Should set me up nicely for a pb next saturday! 

MR- nice one thats a good tempo session that is Cant wait to get my marathon out the way so i can make my speed work relevant to the 5k and even the 3k. i want to do shorter races next spring as part of a long term plan to progress through the distances properly where you racing next Saturday?

The parkrun, i've decided to do the 5k once every 2 weeks, and that 10k I did yesterday every other week. What is interesting is according to mcmillan running calculator, I should be running 18:27 for the 5k, 13 secs faster than my current pb. That and i'll be doing my first ever club speed session tomorrow, should set me up nicely. 

Mike, remember in a 10k race you don't get a 30sec breather in between 5k sections tho...so you can't claim that as a 10k pb

good luck tho

Well, you could have a 10 second breather, but you would have to include that into your calculation of the overall finish time ! However, that is a good holding of pace over the 10km, considering that actually that pace isn't far off your 5km max pace, so that's a great session Mike, well done!

Mike, 5k and hm require quite different training. Whilst you could do a half as a long run, you probably wouldn't feel like you'd done yourself justice if you tried to race it off specific 5km training. Having said that, if you were able to get a build up of a couple of months, maybe not for the GNR as that's a bit close to the end of the track season, but perhaps something in mid to late October or early November, you could afford a couple of months of base mileage work as winter training, which would allow you to train specifically. It would have to be factored in to an overall training plan by someone who knew what they were doing coaching-wise as part of a long-term strategy, but a couple of months of slower running at a higher mileage, followed by some hardcore speedwork can pay dividends in the long term by improving the general fitness base on to which to then build the faster training, but only if the athlete and coach are patient and have a long term view, as in the short term the athlete go slower over the shorter distances.

I'm personally planning a half marathon followed by a short xc/indoor season in in the first part of this winter - I'm not planning to run well in the shorter races, but these are part of the overall plan leading into next summer's target races. I don't know if it's going to work yet though, this is my first time doing this! I'll let you know in May.....

Haha your right Stevie, so I guess I did the 10k in 38:50, I'll mark that down as my current 10k pb then, its still below what I was hoping for anyway. 

Thanks for the advice dancing, my plan at the moment is to slowly build up the mileage while doing 2 quality sessions a week, how much is enough mileage for the 5k? I know its all down to personal preference and how your body adapts but what is the general guideline? So I plan on doing this for a year and see where that gets me, maybe doing a few tweaks along the way, but hopefully I should be around 50mpw by christmas time. Im going down to training for the first time tonight at my athletics club, will let you all know how it goes, but if I like it and im sure I will, i'll pay for the annual membership and I'll have a talk with the coach there.

Good luck dancing with your HM, wish you a injury-free season.  

mike , you wil probably find the club will let you have a few weeks of training to see if its the club for you before having to part with your cash.

regards mileage...i would have thought time on your feet is advisable.  How about build upto a 10m sunday long run run at easy pace.  so nice and slow!   try and do the other days in smaller training runs say 3 or 4m.  Again you dont have to run these fast. and leave the fast stuff for the park runs / training at the club.   It will feel wrong as "how do i get faster by running slower" but it works.

You mean run your easy days easy and run your hard days hard? I think thats my problem! I tend to get impatient especially on the longer run, and the long easy run turns into a progressive run, and on the hard days, im one who works better with others, so far ive been training on my own, hopefully the sight of others running makes me push that little bit harder.

So, my first club training session done, was very happy, everyone was so welcoming.  Slightly dissapointed in the fact that im by far the youngest there, the 2nd youngest being 31. 

We did a 6 mile run easy run, I was with 3 other runners, 2 of which are sub 17min 5k runners and the other slightly slower than myself. We ran at conversation pace so was able to have a good talk to them about my training and aims and they gave me some helpful and supporting advice.

Shame we couldn't do speedwork today but they do them on wednesdays, so looking forward to that.